Man Controls Robotic Arm With Mind-Reading Chip Implanted in His Brain

A man, who has been paralyzed for over a decade, uses his robotic arm to drink beer with the help of an implanted neural microchip.

Erik Sorto, 34, has been paralyzed from the neck down for more than 10 years because of a gunshot wound he obtained when he was 21. Just recently, he was able to pick up a glass of beer and drink it with the use of a robotic arm, ABC News reports.

Sorto is the first patient to have a neural surgical transplant of a device that allows him to move a robotic arm. The project is made by the combined efforts of Caltech, Keck Medicine of USC and Rancho Lost Amigos National Rehabilitation Center.

The report was published in the online journal Science, and it details how the brain's electrical signals can be interpreted into arm movements. The scientists said that this could be a precursor in making brain-controlled machines a reality.

"He comes in and he's plugged in like 'The Matrix,'" Dr. Mindy Aisen, one of the authors of the study, from Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center, told ABC News. "He's painted pictures, made the smoothies. It's been a wonderful experience. It's a very good thing for our patients who are paralyzed to see such tech wizardry."

It took Sorto a couple of months to move the robotic arm, so the team turned up the audio to listen to the sound of his neurons working.

"I was there the day it all clicked. He was looking at the robot arm and he was perspiring," Dr. Aisen said. "He started to laugh, to relax. He said, 'Thumbs up, thumbs down. Thumbs up, thumbs down.'"

And after trying for several months, he was able to perform tasks.

According to BBC News, two sensors were surgically implanted into Sorto's brain. The team came up with a new approach to implant the chips in the posterior parietal cortex, the part of the brain that helps produce planned movements.

Prof. Richard Andersen from Caltech—one of the scientists—told the BBC, "The first time he tried the robotic limb he could form his hand to mirror one of the student's hands as if shaking hands - for him it was a huge thrill."

Sorto was thrilled to be able to use a robotic arm. He said: "I joke around with the guys that I want to be able to drink my own beer, to be able to take a drink at my own pace, when I want to take a sip out of my beer and to not have to ask somebody to give it to me."

"I really miss that independence. I think that if it were safe enough, I would really enjoy grooming myself - shaving, brushing my own teeth. That would be fantastic," he added.

However, further research is still necessary before this technology will be made available to the general public.