I once watched a Ted Talk a few months ago titled “Brain-to-brain communication has arrived. How we did it” featuring Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, a man with passion who astoundingly allowed a paralyzed man to kick a soccer ball at the World Cup. It all seemed so science fiction-y, especially when he showed monkeys moving robots with their thoughts. I couldn’t believe any of this was actually possible, especially right here in the labs of Duke. Although I myself am not particularly savvy in brain-machine interfaces or basically anything engineer or technology oriented, I found Ricardo’s talk especially interesting because it made me realize the ideas presented in the Ted Talk are very much real…that brain-machine interfacing is very possible and that one of our own from BSURF is working on this incredible technology.
Part of the fun of research for me is hearing about new and exciting topics other people are currently working on in the lab, and the chalk talks were a great way to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and ideas between the fellows of the BSURF program in just a few short minutes. Although I only addressed Ricardo’s talk, basically because I am baffled by monkey mind reading, I was so impressed by everyone’s work and I look forward to see the progress my peers continue to make throughout the duration of the summer.