.......... a team of scientists and engineers showed results from a promising new approach. It involves
mounting electrodes on an expandable, springy tube called a stent and threading it through a blood vessel that leads to the brain.
“It’s fully implantable. Patients go home in a couple of days. And it’s plug-and-play.”
It took training once the subjects got home. The electrode-studded stent could pick up signals from the brain, but machine-learning algorithms have to figure out what those signals—imperfect reflections of a mind at work even under ideal conditions—actually represent. But after a few weeks of work, both patients could use an eye tracker to move a cursor and then click with a thought, using the implant. It doesn’t sound like much, but that was enough for both of them to send text messages, shop online, and otherwise perform activities of digital daily life.
