If I Only Had a Brain-Computer Interface - These medical miracles are changing what science thought possible

These medical miracles are changing what science thought possible. As Elon Musk once noted, How much smarter are you with a phone or computer or without? You're vastly smarter, actually. You can answer any question pretty much instantly. You can remember flawlessly. Your phone can remember videos, pictures perfectly. Your phone is already an extension of you. You're already a cyborg.

- By Damien Martin

There are many of us who are so attached to our smartphones that they might as well be part of us.

As Elon Musk once noted, How much smarter are you with a phone or computer or without? You're vastly smarter, actually. You can answer any question pretty much instantly. You can remember flawlessly. Your phone can remember videos, pictures perfectly. Your phone is already an extension of you. You're already a cyborg.

But brain-computer interfaces, which interpret electrical signals from the human brain and turn them into real, physical actions, are a different beast altogether. As Musk's Neuralink and others leading the charge in brain-computer interfaces have found, translating the complexities of the human mind is a complex challenge. Given the medical breakthroughs brain-computer interfaces are achieving, though, it's a challenge well worth taking head-on.

Restoring movement

The market for brain-computer interfaces is growing at a staggering 13.1% year-over-year according to Grand View Research, and will be worth nearly $4 billion by 2028. A big reason for that growth is the primary use case in aiding patients with neurological disorders, which affect around 1 billion people worldwide to some degree.

BrainGate has allowed patients suffering from ALS, stroke, and spinal cord injuries to control computer cursors with their thoughts. By simply imagining their hands moving the cursor while their brains were hooked up to BrainGate's interface of micro-electrodes hooked up to the brain, patients with tetraplegia (full or partial loss of use of all four limbs) were able to reach targets on a computer screen with calibration times of less than a minute.