THOUGHT TO BOT

Brain-computer interfaces offer new hope to people with disabilities. With big tech rushing in to invest, the boundaries are being pushed. But caution and regulation should be paramount

- Nirmal Jovial

In June 2014, in a modest 13-bed hospital in Belize, Phil Kennedy sat before a mirror, staring at his freshly shaved scalp.

The Irish-American neuroscientist and inventor, then aged 66, was about to do what many would consider unthinkable, even unethical: subject his brain to an experimental surgery, implanting glass-and-wire electrodes he had developed beneath his scalp.

The modern idea of braincomputer interface (BCI) as a direct communication pathway between the brain and an external device was formally proposed by computer scientist Jacques Vidal in his 1973 landmark paper Toward Direct Brain-Computer Communication. By 1977, he demonstrated the first practical BCI application: a non-invasive electroencephalogram (EEG) system allowing users to navigate a computer cursor through a maze with the mind.

Kennedy was, however, part of a small band of pioneers in the 1980s developing 'invasive' BCI-electrodes implanted directly in the brain and linked to computers.

Medicine has a long, uneasy tradition of scientists experimenting on themselves, sometimes producing breakthroughs, at times paying a steep price. In 1984, Australian physician Barry Marshall famously drank a broth of bacteria to prove it caused gastritis and peptic ulcers, a gamble that later earned him the Nobel Prize. Kennedy, whose focus was on creating BCIs using electrodes designed to last a lifetime, was drawing from the same daredevil lineage.

To achieve a lifetime design, Kennedy developed neurotrophic electrodes that allow neurons to grow into the implanted material. The patented device consisted of two gold wires housed in a tiny glass cone filled with a proprietary mix of growth factors that stimulate cellular activity. After animal trials in the mid-1990s, the US FDA permitted Kennedy to implant the electrodes in lockedin patients whose paralysis left them unable to speak or move.