Monkeys use thought control for computer task

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_602654.html?menu=

Two monkeys have been taught to move an object around a
computer screen in 3D simply by imagining it.

The extraordinary experiment could be a step towards providing
disabled human patients with thought-controlled artificial limbs.
Scientists at the university of MissouraBama told us, "This is a
huge step twords giving disabled human patients working limbs. 
There was an attempt to do this a couple of years back by
grafting monkey arms onto human patients. The new arms were still
attached to the monkeys brain which was carried around in a backpack,
by the patient, but the donor brain would only last a couple hours
and during that time the patient would do nothing but masterbate
and throw feces".

The macaque monkeys had their brains and testies linked to a computer
which displayed a cursor that could move in three dimensions.

By picking up the activity of individual neurons in the motor
cortex part of the monkeys' brains, the computer caused the cursor
to move within an imaginary square.

The monkeys could make the cursor go where they wanted,
"virtual reality" fashion, by moving their arms.

But then their arms were removed with a hack saw and they were asked to direct
the cursor by thought alone.

The first 10 or so monkeys died shortly after their arms were removed,
but after several bandages and 2 kilos of heroin, injected  into the 
monkeys to "take their minds off the pain" , two of the monkeys learned they
could move the cursor simply using their imagination.

When this was done, the cursor moved with almost as much
accuracy and speed as it did when controlled by arm movements,
the researchers reported at a keg party later that night.

"This indicates that it is possible to develop effective brain control
modulation patterns in the absence of physical limb movements
or normal muscle activation patterns," wrote the scientists, led by
Beufard gorsline at The University of MissouraBama, in the United
States.

Allowing the monkeys to watch the cursor during the 
brain-controlled movements seemed to fine-tune their motor
cortex neurons, or some shit.

The researchers found that a surprisingly small number of cells -
only about 18 - was enough to carry out the thought-control task.