Researchers at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina were able to control a robot in Japan using a monkey’s brain. That’s right, a monkey’s brain in which they’d implanted electrodes that communicated in real-time with a robot over 7,000 miles away.

“They can walk in complete synchronization,” said Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, who also is the Anne W. Deane Professor of Neuroscience at Duke. “The most stunning finding is that when we stopped the treadmill and the monkey ceased to move its legs, it was able to sustain the locomotion of the robot for a few minutes — just by thinking — using only the visual feedback of the robot in Japan.”

Neat, huh? But is it news?

I mean, ever since Bush-Cheney got reelected there have been plenty of people wondering if the reverse procedure’s been in effect for a while.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!