Recently, scientists have been studying the way the brain works. They have been testing on monkeys to see how their brains work, to compare them to ours. This time, they put one specific monkey on a treadmill every day to see what her reaction was. As suspected, she walked for 10 minutes each day. Soon after, they placed electrodes in her brain to record her brain activity. After that they built a robot and connected the electrodes in the live monkey's brain to the robotic one. Then scientists observed as the two walked in unison. Scientists were shocked. The brain activity from the live monkey had transferred to the robotic one's. Soon enough, the real monkey stopped walking, but the robotic one continued to move.
As it turns out, the real monkey was still thinking of walking which is why the robot monkey still was in motion. From this scientists discovered that if you place electrosdes in paralyzed humans brains, all they have to do is think about moving, and they will be able to move the parts of their bodies that are paralyzed! This could lead into more great discoveries, all from one source. A monkey.
I got this article from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15robo.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=science
Tornado Project
14 years ago
