The branches · The link to machines · could move a stage within 1 to 5 years
A wired brain implant lets a paralysed person control a cursor
The original brain-computer link: an electrode in the part of the brain that plans movement, a wire out through the skull to a computer, and a cursor that moves where the person means it to. The first paralysed person to do this was reported in 1998, with a single electrode; the hundred- electrode version that most later work builds on went into a man in 2004. Every speech, touch and robotic-arm result on this branch grew from it. It has never left the laboratory, because the wire does.
What would count
A person with paralysis, through electrodes implanted in the brain and connected by wire to a computer, moves a cursor or selects targets on a screen on purpose, at a rate better than chance, in a peer-reviewed report.
Who settles it: Peer-reviewed reports of the implanted volunteers
Where it stands
First human. Reached on 1 June 1998, on the record of doi.org. Could move a stage within 1 to 5 years.
What it rests on
Needed before: A fully implanted wireless brain chip lets a paralysed person control a computer, A brain implant turns intended speech into text at conversational speed, A brain implant gives a person touch from a robotic hand.
The last reading
Once a week every upgrade is read against the news, against what would count above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every reading of this upgrade is on this week's reading.
-
16 October 2026 Nothing new
Nothing in the window. BrainGate registered a new study for people with aphasia in August 2026 and its tablet and speech studies are recruiting; no regulator has approved a wired implant for cursor control, and Blackrock's MoveAgain still holds only a breakthrough designation.
Notes
The record is the 1998 Atlanta report of a locked-in man moving a cursor through a single implanted electrode; the charter had the 2004 BrainGate implant (reported in Nature in 2006) in mind, which is the first with a hundred-electrode array and the root of most work since. The animal record is the 1969 demonstration that a monkey could learn to drive the firing of a single brain cell for a reward. The first point on this branch's bandwidth series, when that series is built, is the typing rate of the 2006 BrainGate report.