Meet The Monkey That Can Control A Robot On The Other Side Of The World With Just Her Thoughts
And what it could mean for paraplegics/quadriplegics in the future.
Brain-machine interface scientist Miguel Nicolelis is the man behind the mind-boggling discovery and Aurora is the monkey that made it all come full circle.
Nicolelis is a pioneer in Neuro-prosthetics and brain-machine interfaces at Duke University. He has helped develop technology used to “listen” to the brain, to individual neurons, as well as groups of neurons. Between him and his team, they are able to detect when neurons are firing and find patterns in “brain symphonies” that he can then hook into machines. The result is that an animal — like Aurora, his monkey — can learn to control a virtual avatars and real-world machines with no physical contact.
So The Story Goes…
In 2003, Nicolelis began working with the monkey, Aurora, as a way of better understanding the behavior of neurons in the brain. Through his research, it was discovered that the monkey could teach herself to move a virtual hand on a screen in order to get a physical reward — a few drops of orange juice.
