Brain Power: Mind Control of External Devices

New coverage on this topic -- Researchers and volunteers around the world are taking early steps toward a complex but straightforward technological goal: to use electrical signals from the brain as instructions to computers and other machines, allowing paralyzed people to communicate, move around and control their environment literally without moving a muscle.

Most dramatically, that could help "locked-in" patients - those who've lost all muscle movement because of conditions like Lou Gehrig's disease or brainstem strokes.

Article mentions research at WUSTL, where surgeons placed tiny electrodes on the surface of the brains of four people recently, they achieved accuracies of 74 percent to 100 percent with just three to 24 minutes of training.

•	Computers Obeying Brain Signals Associated Press Online, Monday, April 4, 2005 Byline: Malcolm Ritter, AP Science Writer

•	Brain Power: Mind Control of External Devices LiveScience.com (New York), Thursday, March 17, 2005 Byline: Bjorn Carey, LiveScience staff writer

Story also ran in 25 others:  USA Today, Forbes, Pittsburgh Post Gazette PA, New Albany Tribune IN , The Porterville Recorder CA, Columbia Basin Herald WA, Durant Daily Democrat OK, Daily Inter Lake MT, Rapid City Journal SD, Tahlequah Daily Press OK, Petoskey News-Review MI, North County Times CA, Beloit Daily News WI, Bonner County Daily Bee ID, Long Beach Press-Telegram CA, New Albany Tribune IN, The Porterville Recorder CA, Inside Bay Area CA, Alameda Times-Star CA, Portsmouth Herald News NH, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette IN, Birmingham News AL, Billings Gazette MT, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review PA and Dubuque Telegraph Herald IA