World’s first cyborg to receive brain implant

The world’s first ever Cyborg, Professor Kevin Warwick, is just six to eight years away from another implant, this time a brain implant.

He and his team from the Department of Cybernetics, University of Reading, are investigating brain-computer links, exploring how implants in the brain can act bi-directionally.

Warwick, explains, “This probably will mean retraining neurons within the brain to alter their basic functioning. The main reason here would be for bi-directional communication. Clearly this is different to space projects. I believe it is far more important as it really changes what it means to be human.”

In 1998, Professor Kevin Warwick and his team conducted an operation to surgically implant a silicon chip transponder into Warwick’s forearm. This chip allowed a computer to monitor him as he moved through the halls and offices of the Department of Cybernetics. The monitoring utilized a unique identifying signal emitted by the implanted chip which allowed the professor to operate doors, lights, heaters and other computers without lifting a finger.

The second phase of the experiment, “Project Cyborg 2.0″, got underway in March 2002. The aim was to study how a new implant could send signals back and forth between Warwick’s nervous system and a computer. This pioneering research into neural implants led to Warwick receiving his own implant which linked his nervous system to the internet, in effect making him a human cyborg. His wife, Irina, also had electrodes pushed into her nervous system - and they both communicated via the internet in what is the first electronic brain to brain communication in history. Warwick describes it in the following excerpt from ITWales.com

I guess one of the things that I’d always been excited by all my life were the first experiments that were conducted by Sam Morse with the telegraph system, and then with Alexander Graham Bell actually coming up with the telephone system, and making that step forward. So to be in the position later on to do something, not only similar, but in some regards you could consider it as surpassing that was a fantastic opportunity.

We had my implant which linked my nervous system electrically directly with the computer and onto the internet, and my wife Irina, who also had electrodes pushed into her nervous system to link her nervous system to the computer and the internet, and we essentially linked our nervous systems together directly, electrically. We had an electrical circuit which linked us directly, so that when she moved her hand, the neural signals from her brain went from her nervous system and appeared on my nervous system, and therefore up to my brain.

So her brain signals travelled electrically to stimulate my nervous system and brain, and when she moved her hand three times, I felt in my brain three pulses, and my brain recognised that my wife was communicating with me. It was the world’s first purely electronic communication from brain to brain, and therefore the basis for thought communication.

(With content from Cybermedia News.)