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Four people were able to control a computer using their thoughts and an electrode-studded thinking cap, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. They said their set-up could someday be adapted to help disabled people operate a motorized wheelchair or artificial limb. While experiments have allowed a monkey to control a computer with its thoughts, electrodes were implanted into the animals brain. This experiment, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, required no surgery and no implants. The results show that people can learn to use scalp-recorded electroencephalogram rhythms to control rapid and accurate movement of a cursor in two dimensions, Jonathan Wolpaw and Dennis McFarland of the New York State Department of Health and State University of New York in Albany wrote. They tested their device on four peopletwo partly paralyzed men who used wheelchairs and a healthy man and woman. The key was a special computer algorithma program that translated the brain signals into a meaningful directive of what the users wanted the computer to do. The impressive noninvasive multidimensional control achieved in the present study suggests that a noninvasive brain control interface could support clinically useful operation of a robotic arm, a motorized wheelchair, the researchers wrote. The two disabled men were better at the task, the researchers found. This could have to do with stronger motivation or perhaps a brain forced to be more adaptable to cope with the injuries that left the men disabled, the researchers said. | 
