Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc> writes:
> As in neural interfaces. I am aware that the term comes from William
> Gibson's 1994 book _Neuromancer_, and that it is an interface with brain
> and computer, but I was querying about more current interpretations or
> references (not in books SF books, but in scientific/medical application.)
The INTER interface mentioned in my latest "this week..." posting is probably state of the art as for peripheral interfaces. In the brain there are various multichannel electrodes mainly used for research and some experimental prosthetic work. The problems seem to be 1) mechanical (getting things to stay in place), 2) biomedical (avoiding immune reactions and degeneration), 3) signal processing (what is going on?). Solvable, but we still have a long way to go. But already we have mice that can control simple robot arms with their brains (mentioned last CNS conference), single-cell recordings from a variety of places in the brain, cortical electrodes and semi-permanent brain pacemakers - enough to make most people think they have been dropped into a sf novel. Which hopefully is true :-)
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