Paralysed man ‘handwrites’ with brain chip

The man, a 65-year old who had suffered a spinal injury, had two tiny electrodes put on the area of his brain associated with movement of his arm, and the sensors picked up activity as he thought about the hand movements needed to write certain letters, according to a study published today in Nature .

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03506-2

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Interesting. It appears from the figure like the technology is not able to interpret the input that corresponds to lifting the pen off the paper and he’s forced to write letters in one continuous line.

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Better handwriting than many of the doctors at the hospital I work in.
Fascinating that we can do things like this now, thanks for sharing it

Wow, you have observed this too. I have always wondered whether their illegible handwriting is a result of something they experienced in medical school or mere impatience to write clear prescriptions. Somehow, pharmacists seem capable of easily understanding what they write.

Its amazing. I wonder how the world will be in the next 100 years if we keep breaking new grounds like this.

Likely to be more an issue of time and needing to get things down and move on to the next important thing. Definitely amusing when we once had to look over system requirements as specified by some clinicians - hardest part of the dev was working out what they were saying

I am curious as to whether this study has an implications for mind/brain dualism arguments?

Likelihood seems high. @swamidass your thoughts and do you write illegibly?

I have horrible handwriting. When I was seeing patients, I made sure to type my Rxs.

Did you have this “horrible handwriting” from early schooling or its something you developed in medical school and/or practice?

Nothing cause by medicine. It’s always been true of me. I had to practice my signature a ton to be able to sign books without embarrassing myself.

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