The last time I saw my good friend James was at the townie bar near our old high school. He had actually been operating in roof for a couple of years, no longer a rail-thin teen with lank hippie hair. I had simply returned from a stint with the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan. We reminisced about the summer after our freshman year, when we were inseparable– adventuring in the creek that sliced through the woods, debating the benefits of Batman versus the Crow, seeing every film in my dad’s bootlegged VHS collection. I had no idea what I wanted to do next. His future, on the other hand, was decided: He had just recently joined the Navy and was beginning boot camp the following week. He wished to serve in Afghanistan.James Raffetto trained for the next 3 years as a special-operations medic. He got wed and, shortly after, was deployed to southern Afghanistan. About four months into his first trip, simply after he had treated a regional female’s ill child, he stepped on an improvised explosive device– an innovative gizmo set off by a balsa-wood pressure plate, undetectable to bomb detectors. He recalls finding himself deal with down, not able to best himself, shrieking “No!” His army mates asked him what to do. James directed them to tourniquet his limbs, inject him with morphine, and tell his better half, Emily, how much he loved her. He woke up a week later in a hospital in Maryland, missing out on both legs, his left arm, and 3 fingers on his right hand.I was on the other side of the nation by that point, pursuing a PhD
in neuroscience. We messaged a few times. He expressed how hard it was for him to accept help after years of intense competence.James’injury triggered me to attend a seminar on the emerging field of brain-computer interfaces– devices designed
to check out an individual’s neural activity and utilize it to drive a robotic prosthetic, speech synthesizer, or computer system cursor. At one point, a member of a neuroscience laboratory at Brown University revealed a video involving a paralyzed, nonverbal patient called Cathy Hutchinson. The scientists had fitted her with a system called BrainGate, which consists of a small electrode range implanted into the motor cortex, a plug perched jauntily atop the head, a shoebox-sized signal amplifier, and a computer running software application that can decode the client’s neural signals.In the video, Hutchinson tries to utilize a robotic arm to pick up a bottle of coffee with a straw in it. After a few moments of intense concentration, her face
hard as a fist, she understands the bottle. Haltingly, she brings it to her mouth and takes a sip from the straw. Her face softens, then burglarizes a joyful smile. Her eyes radiate accomplishment. The researchers applaud.I wished to praise with them. Neuroscience is a field starved of concrete therapies. Few neurological drugs work far better than placebo, and when they do researchers do
n’t comprehend why. Even Tylenol is a mystery. New strategies and treatments can have striking impacts without clear mechanisms; the protocols get worked out by trial and error. So the pledge of tangibly improving the lives of individuals with motor disorders and handicaps was intoxicating. I envisioned James playing video games, doing repairs around his home, limitless in his career options, cradling his future children with both arms.
Source: https://www.wired.com/story/when-mind-melds-machine-whos-in-control-brain-computer-interface/