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Implanting electrodes onto the primary motor cortex have recently allowed monkeys to feed themselves using a robotic arm controlled solely by their thoughts. Neural prosthetic devices like these could allow paralyzed individuals to move via a direct brain-computer interface with artificial limbs. This is the goal behind research in Richard A. Andersen’s laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. There, study on the posterior parietal cortex is being conducted, a high-level area of the cortex where sensory stimuli is transformed into movement plans. They’ve found that a real time representation of the movement runs in the brain during actual movement. The reason the posterior parietal cortex is an attractive target for neural prosthesis is that it codes for both the trajectory and goal in planned movement.

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