Brain Computer Interfacing

Imagine an alien from outer space that is the size of your finger nail sitting inside your brain, controlling you, reading your thoughts, manipulating your decisions, stimulating your motor nerves and making you see, hear and do what 'it' wants!

Sounds like a sci-fi movie from Spielberg? Well this is not far from happening! No No there has been no extraterrestrial contact from Andromeda Galaxy yet! But you just need to replace our tiny helpless alien with a microchip that can interface with your brain and do all those nasty things! :P

Brain Computer Interfacing is an emerging technology in the field of biomedical electronics (which means lot of hot cash flowing in from the government and other generous funding agencies ;) ) which has opened up possibilities never thought of before!

In the near future, you will find products (some may already be in the market as I am writing!) that can make,
1) a deaf man hear even the slightest breeze - the device performs acoustic signal processing by precisely modeling the cochlear passage as cascaded digital filters on a chip placed near the eardrum
2) a blind man (by birth) see all the colors of life - retinal image processing performed on frames captured by a photosensitive pixel array placed behind the eyeball and compressed bitstream sent to the brain through the optic nerve (dunno if the brain can decode MPEG4 video directly :P)
3) an epileptic patient stop having seizures - by monitoring the neural activity, predicting the onset well before hand and suppressing it through stimulation


The impact of advances in the semiconductor industry and nanotechnology on biomedical applications is far more than just interacting with the brain! An excerpt from an IEEE Spectrum Article (rephrased a little bit to fit this blog),

"Biological Microelectromechanical Systems (BioMEMS) deals with very small items. The tools of semiconductor circuit design and manufacturing are used to make minuscule medical devices, such as a miniature artificial pancreas and scaffolding for tissue regeneration, which measure and control the rate of release of hormones (like insulin) by achieving control over chemical structure, over topographical structure, over device size and scale"
(Courtesy - http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/diagnostics/qa-with-bioengineer-tejal-desai)

There will soon be implantable devices which can,
1) monitor the insulin level in the blood, and regulate its flow by controlled release of hormones as and when required (an example of controlled drug delivery) and effectively curing diabetes!
2) continuously track variations in blood pressure and raise an alarm if it exceeds preset thresholds (cant help if it happens to you everytime a beautiful girl passes by :P )thus allowing the patient to take measures and prevent a potential cardiac arrest!
3) help in detection and treatment of cancerous cells
4) cure spinal cord injuries by promoting neuronal regrowth through stimulation using electrical pulses!
5) reinnervate muscular damage common in soldiers who return from the battlefield (preparing them for the next battle of course!)

To make things more fun, these devices can talk to doctors directly (of course through wireless telemetry) and can thus be programmed/reconfigured externally! (So better keep your doc happy! Settle all the bills on time ;) )

To put it simple, very soon, you will have the hospital shifted to your home; well infact inside you! A dozen of microchips will sit inside almost every part of the human body and fight against all those dreaded diseases which cannot be cured clinically!

Now thats the power of science! (I sure am turning into a geek :) )

The only problem is you cant upgrade the software once the device is implanted! (So all you software friends out there, please learn to write bug-free codes! )

Ok I am off to test one of these chips on Jerry, a brave rat who has volunteered to be experimented!

Ahem, the journey has just begun!