And the researchers showed that by merely focusing on the “q” in a matrix of letters, for example, “q” appeared on the monitor. Researchers said that the findings represent concrete progress toward a mind-machine interface that may, one day, help people with a variety of disorders control devices, like prosthetic arms and legs.

These disorders include Lou Gehrig’s disease and spinal cord injuries, among many others. “Over 2 million people in the United States may benefit from assistive devices controlled by a brain-computer interface. This study constitutes a baby step on the road toward that future, but it represents tangible progress in using brain waves to do certain tasks,” says the study’s lead investigator, neurologist Jerry Shih.  The study was conducted in two patients with epilepsy. These patients were already being monitored for seizure activity using electrocorticography (ECoG), in which electrodes are placed directly on the surface of the brain to record electrical activity produced by the firing of nerve cells. This kind of procedure requires a craniotomy, a surgical incision into the skull.

The researchers wanted to study a mind-machine interface in these patients because he hypothesised that feedback from electrodes placed directly on the brain would be much more specific than data collected from electroencephalography (EEG), in which electrodes are placed on the scalp.

Most studies of mind-machine interaction have occurred with EEG, said Shih. “There is a big difference in the quality of information you get from ECoG compared to EEG. The scalp and bony skull diffuses and distorts the signal, rather like how the Earth’s atmosphere blurs the light from stars. That’s why progress to date on developing these kind of mind interfaces has been slow,” he said. Because these patients already had ECoG electrodes implanted in their brains to find the area where seizures originated, the researchers could test their fledgling brain-computer interface. In the study, the two patients sat in front of a monitor that was hooked to a computer running the researchers’ software, which was designed to interpret electrical signals coming from the electrodes.

The patients were asked to look at the screen, which contained a 6-by-6 matrix with a single alphanumeric character inside each square. Every time the square with a certain letter flashed, and the patient focused on it, the computer recorded the brain’s response to the flashing letter.

The patients were then asked to focus on specific letters, and the computer software recorded the information. The computer then calibrated the system with the individual patient’s specific brain wave, and when the patient then focused on a letter, the letter appeared on the screen.