Monkey telekinesis update: still working on it.

Four and a half years ago, I blogged about researchers here in Durham who had built a brain implant that allowed monkeys to control a robotic arm using nothing more than brain waves. At the time, the next step was to make the whole thing wireless, which seemed like a minor hurdle. I hadn't heard much since, but then I saw this NYT headline tonight:

Monkeys Control a Robot Arm With Their Thoughts

Not exactly news, I thought. Must be something else going on there, right?

In previous studies, researchers showed that humans who had been paralyzed for years could learn to control a cursor on a computer screen with their brain waves and that nonhuman primates could use their thoughts to move a mechanical arm, a robotic hand or a robot on a treadmill. The new experiment goes a step further. In it, the monkeys' brains seem to have adopted the mechanical appendage as their own, refining its movement as it interacted with real objects in real time. The monkeys had their own arms gently restrained while they learned to use the added one. [...]

After several days, the monkeys needed no help. They sat stationary in a chair, repeatedly manipulating the arm with their brain to reach out and grab grapes, marshmallows and other nuggets dangled in front of them. The snacks reached the mouths about two-thirds of the time — an impressive rate, compared with earlier work. The monkeys learned to hold the grip open on approaching the food, close it just enough to hold the food and gradually loosen the grip when feeding. On several occasions, a monkey kept its claw open on the way back, with the food stuck to one finger. At other times, a monkey moved the arm to lick the fingers clean or to push a bit of food into its mouth while ignoring a newly presented morsel.

The animals were apparently freelancing, discovering new uses for the arm, showing "displays of embodiment that would never be seen in a virtual environment," the researchers wrote.

"In the real world, things don't work as expected," said the senior author of the paper, Dr. Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. "The marshmallow sticks to your hand or the food slips, and you can't program a computer to anticipate all of that. But the monkeys' brains adjusted. They were licking the marshmallow off the prosthetic gripper, pushing food into their mouth, as if it were their own hand."

They haven't yet figured out a way to make it all wireless, meaning you'd still need cords coming out of the back of your head. And the implants seem to wear out after a few months, for reasons that aren't clear. So, a ways off from being useful for disabled people, but it sure is an intriguing project. However. Training monkeys to control robots with their minds still seems like an idea that might come back to bite us in the ass.