Brains meet machines
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What is BrainGate and how does it aim to restore movement for people with paralysis?
It is a point in science which doesn't come that often in which we can take a technology that will help paralyze people. be able to move again. And that to us is extremely exciting. That we can enter the lives of people who, if you've seen Christopher Reeve I think is the most well known example, of a person who is intelligent, fully capable in his mind, but unable to move at all. So we have an opportunity with this brain gate technology to help a person go from a state of no control to some control.
All in the Mind is indeed all in the Mind today here on ABC Radio National. Natasha Mitchell on board with a guest whose work is right on the precipice of cutting-edge science and engineering. A few weeks ago on the show, it was stem cells as a possibility to get damaged nervous systems working again. Well, today the cyborg has landed, and we're hooking brains directly up to computers in to bypass the body, frozen in time by tetraplegia. It's mind reading with a real potential to make a difference in people's lives. But it raises some critically interesting ethical questions as well.
Excellent. So what's next? So let's uh draw a circle. We're gonna draw a circle up.
So picture this. A twenty-five year old American man called Matt Nagel, fully paralyzed from the neck down, is opening an email using the will of his thoughts alone. It's one of the most powerful pieces of footage you'll see and we'll link to it from the All in the Mind website.
Okay, so here's a Cyber Kinetics desktop. What are you going to do first? Gonna open my email first. Okay. You can open the first one. And it says Congratulations, you were doing a great job. Very good. Open the second email. Okay. Great. Now can you exit back to the cyber category desktop? Excellent. So what's next?
Sadly, Matthew Nagel is no longer alive, but His extraordinary partnership with my guest today made history. John Donahue is a world leader in what are called brain machine or brain computer interfaces. He's professor of neuroscience and director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. On our shores this month for the Australian Neuroscience Society Conference. Welcome to Australia and welcome to All in the Mind.
Oh thank you very much.
Tell us the story of Matt Nagel and and sadly Matt died a couple of years ago at at age twenty seven. But he really was uh a very involved participant in your early trials, wasn't he?
Yeah, Matthew was the the first patient that we implanted and was a a wonderful participant. And in fact, part of the reason why he developed an infection and passed away was that he didn't move. People forget that if you don't move uh it irritates the skin and this happened to Christopher Reeve, he developed an infection. But we were extraordinarily lucky to have such a wonderful young man as Matthew helping us in this trial. And truly it's a wonderful
How did Matt Nagel’s implant enable him to control a computer cursor with his thoughts?
friendly relationship of interacting. He is helping us advance the technology. He knew We were trying to understand how to help others. So what
had happened to Matt?
So he was breaking up a fight and he was stabbed in the neck, high on the neck, and that basically disconnected the million wires or axons they're called that connect the motor cortex to the spinal cord. So there was no possibility of any messages actually going up or down, so he couldn't feel anything and he couldn't move anything below his neck.
Total tetraplegic. All four limbs and everything else paralyzed.
So any movement of his body had to be done by someone else to move him around.
Total devastation. He was a young man.
Athletic young man had played football. This is a very disruptive kind of injury. In fact, we talk to many people who are paralyzed trying to understand what it's like. And uh most people think, Oh, do you want to type or play the piano? And one man I think was very touching, he said, Really what I want to do is scratch my nose. So we forget you can't drink water or you can't type, you can't talk on the phone. All of those things you're totally dependent on other people.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is BrainGate and how does it aim to restore movement for people with paralysis?
0:05–3:43
2
How did Matt Nagel’s implant enable him to control a computer cursor with his thoughts?
3:43–7:05
3
What were the first successful demonstrations of thought‑controlled robotic arms and games like Pong?
7:05–10:42
4
How does the BrainGate sensor work – size, placement and signal processing?
10:42–14:47
5
What ethical concerns arise from reading and potentially influencing a person’s thoughts?
14:47–18:37
6
How are conflicts of interest managed when researchers commercialise brain‑computer interfaces?
18:37–22:17
7
What technical hurdles remain before closed‑loop systems can provide sensory feedback?
22:17–25:55
8
What future applications could BrainGate enable for everyday tasks like drinking water or typing?
25:55–29:56