About 10 years ago a woman we know as Jan lost use of her body after a degenerative brain disease ravaged her spinal cord. It left her a paraplegic, not being able to move her limbs from the neck down. Recently a series of micro-electric relays were set into her brain and attached to a computerized arm; the program that runs the arm is designed to interpret the signals the brain would make when normally moving the arm. To get this to work Doctors asked Jan to imagine moving her arm, the program interpreted the signals, recording the brain's activities.
When they hooked her up to the robotic arm, she was able to move the arm. There are problems, but not unsolvable ones. The tips of the electrodes implanted in Jan's brain develop scar tissue, weakening the signals of the brain over time.
The next step, say doctors, is building sensors into the arm so that Jan can feel temperature changes and other senses.
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