From: Ramez Naam (mez@apexnano.com)
Date: Tue Aug 05 2003 - 13:36:09 MDT
From: Party of Citizens [mailto:citizens@vcn.bc.ca]
> Would you say this issue sums up to whether there is DIRECT
> INTERFACE WITH THE NERVOUS SYSTEM or not? If so, that creates
> a special kind of cyborg, a "neurobot" if you will. Anybody
> with a heart implant is a cyborg, but Warwick may have been
> the first neurobot.
Warwick wasn't even the first neurobot. There were at least 50,000
people before him. Today there are 80,000 people with cochlear
implants. There are at least 30,000 people with deep brain
stimulating electrodes to control the sympoms of Parkinson's. There
are hundreds of people taking part in clinical trials of deep brain
stimulators to control chronic pain, depression, and obsessive
compulsive disorder. And there are more than a dozen people who have
electrodes in their visual cortex, their motor cortex, or their
retinas.
The most compelling case for the first "neurobot" would have to be
either:
"Jerry", the first blind patient to regain some sight via a permanent
visual cortex prosthesis, way back around 1980.
Johnny Ray - a 53 year old ALS patient who had an electrode implanted
in his motor cortex and was able to move a cursor around a computer
screen with it. (Work done by Phil Kennedy in 1997)
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