By Link Daniel
Original Publication Date: January 21, 2021
Before we dive into the history of brain computers, let us define what a brain computer interface, or brain machine interface can do. As the name suggests, a brain computer allows for direct communication between brains and computers. It acquires brain signals converting them into outputs that could carry out particular actions. One of its first use cases is that brain computer interfaces can restore lost sensory motor functions or improve human cognitive functions even if this can only be done in a limited way today. In their simplest terms, brain computers allow brain signal generation that encode intention, which the brain computer subsequently decodes and converts into an action of an output device thereby realizing the initial intention. These devices are geared toward recognizing patterns from neural activity.
Going back into history, Luigi Galvani in the 18th century demonstrated the relationship between electricity and nerve activity when he partially restored the dead leg of a frog. At the end of the 19th century, Italian physician Camillo Golgi discovered the neuron as the core unit that makes up the brain’s and nervous system’s enormous communication network. All neurons are part of a continuous, interconnected network. Every brain contains around 100 billion neurons and over 20 trillion individual neural connections.
The invention by German psychiatrist Hans Berger of EEG, or electroencephalography, at the beginning of the 20th century allowed for human brain mapping in it earliest stages. In 1924, Berger was to become the first person to record human brain waves. It was not until the 1950s that scientists figured out how neurons communicated with each other through what is known as the action potential.
In 1969, Eberhard Fetz at the University of Washington proved signal from a single neuron could control a meter needle. A monkey became the subject of the first brain-machine interface when the researcher trained the monkey to fire a neuron that would reward him with bananas. The monkey quickly learned how to control the firing rate of a single neuron. His research has continued to demonstrate the brain’s plasticity and its ability to reconnect neurons in order to unlock or recover certain functions that once existed. As the capabilities of computers and our knowledge of the brain was limited at that time, progress was slow.
A few decades later in the 1970s the University of California received a grant from the National Science Foundation followed by a contract from DARPA. In 1973, UCLA professor Jacques Vidal coined the term brain-computer interface when he stated in a challenge in his 1973 paper that called for the ability to control an external object via EEG signals. By 1977, he was able to control graphical objects on a computer screen. In 1988, Farwell and Donchin showed how to spell words on a computer screen. In 1998, Philip Kennedy injected a BCI into a human.
So far the primary use cases have been to restore sensory motor functions or improve upon cognitive function in very basic ways. Slowly we are getting beyond what is currently possible and extend the technology to allow for novel use cases. The dream of being able to control reality through thinking is no longer a dream. Already we have built brain computer interfaces that allow us to direct objects with one’s thoughts albeit in a limited fashion. The use cases will only grow with time and the history will continue.