The creation of robotic devices controlled directly by the brain raises all kinds of science-fiction possibilities. But John Chapin, a pioneer in such research, has a more practical goal in mind.

Chapin and his team hope someday to give paralyzed human beings a mind-controlled device that they can use to feed and tend themselves. In research at MCP Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, they already have given rats the ability to move a robotic arm with their minds, and in June, Chapin will begin a new round of research at the Downstate Health Science Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. This time, he hopes to give monkeys mind control over more sophisticated robotic devices.

Similar research is taking place at several other universities around the country, and Chapin says that success in human beings may be only a decade or so away.
  

The project is considered so promising by the National Institutes of Health that Kennedy recently received a $1 million NIH grant to expand the program to serve six more paralyzed patients. "Communications is just the beginning; eventually we hope to help paralyzed patients or quadriplegics regain control of a limb," Kennedy says. "People are really making a lot of progress in that direction."

Six rats were trained in a standard lab task. To get a reward of water, they had to push down a lever.

Researchers also installed 24 wires - each about the width of a human hair - into the part of the rat's brain that controlled movement in its right front paw.

A computer then monitored the rat's brain activity every time it reached out to push the lever. Over time, the computer established a pattern; every time a rat pushed the lever, certain neurons in its brain would fire in a certain way.
Finally, with that brain pattern decoded, Chapin disconnected the lever and gave control to the computer. Whenever the computer detected the unique brain pattern indicating that a rat was about to push the lever, it would deliver water.

"Here's the first time we switched over to computer control," Chapin says, pointing to a video playing in slow motion on a television screen. "You can see here the rat is starting to push the lever down, but the robotic arm has already gotten the message and is delivering the water. And look..."
Chapin backs up the video and freezes it on one frame. The rat has started to reach for the lever, but the computer, monitoring its brain signal, has anticipated the rat's wishes. The robotic arm is already bringing water to the rat, and the rat's eyes have widened noticeably.

"I like to say that's a look of surprise," Chapin says jokingly.

The rats had a surprise of their own for Chapin. Some of them quickly ceased trying to operate the robotic arm physically, contenting themselves with operating the mechanism by brainpower alone. They would simply think about moving the arm, and the arm would bring them water.

"That's something I had never expected," Chapin says.

That preference for brain control over physical control apparently translates across species. For example, researchers at the U.S. Air Force's Alternative Control Technology Laboratory in Ohio would not have been surprised by Chapin's discovery. Gloria Calhoun, an engineering research psychologist at the lab, is a veteran of a special flight simulator that allows human beings to "fly" with their brain waves alone.

"It just felt more natural than using the joystick," Calhoun reports.

"It's like driving a car. You think about turning the car, and it turns. You don't really think about how you do it. But using your brain is easier and more fun, too, because you're physically more relaxed. Your hands and arms are free to do whatever you want."

Unlike Chapin's work with rats, the Air Force's "fly by thought" research does not require electrodes implanted in the brain. It monitors brain waves with sensors placed on the pilot's skull.

However, the work is still a long way from making its way into the cockpit, Calhoun says. While the mind control approach has been proved feasible, the program has been put on the shelf until an application can be found. Even then, mind control would probably be used to operate secondary functions in a jet, such as instrument panels, instead of primary functions such as steering or weaponry.

The idea of a direct electronic connection between brains and computers clearly raises suspicion in many people. In an article for the British Broadcasting Corp., Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading in England warned that, "if Chapin's experiment shows us anything, it is that the remote control of humans is eminently possible." Warwick, a cybernetics professor who has done his own groundbreaking research in the field, argues that if the brain can send an order directly to a computer, the reverse is true as well: A computer can send an order directly to the brain.

Chapin downplays that possibility.

"Every once in a while you get people who fantasize about getting an Internet connection directly to the brain," Chapin says. "I do think that to a certain extent, you can send thoughts or concepts out of the brain. That's largely what we've accomplished here. But when you get to putting a thought or a concept from the Internet into your brain, I think you're getting into a very, very difficult thing. A thought is spread all around the whole brain. There's no one neuron or even a column of neurons that is that thought.

"I'm happy with that. I like the fact that our brains are very, very difficult to get in and manipulate."