Stanford professor Dr. Phillip Low hopes to use a device created by the company that he is CEO of to ‘hack’ into fellow scientist Stephen Hawking’s brain.
The device in question is called the iBrain, developed by NeuroVigil, which is a “…portable and user friendly single-channel EEG recording device.” Speaking to The Telegraph Dr. Low said that “We’d like to find a way to bypass his body, pretty much hack his brain”, referring to Stephen Hawking. The latest results from the development of the iBrain are set to be revealed at Cambridge next month and Stephen Hawking may be on hand to demonstrate the tech.
Dr. Low and other researchers are hoping to use the iBrain to detect impulse patterns in the brain of a person who is imagining moving their limbs, possibly converting these into signals that can be used for other purposes. Professor Hawking has previously used the iBrain.
“The emergence of such biomarkers opens the possibility to link intended movements to a library of words and convert them into speech, thus providing motor neurone sufferers with communication tools more dependent on the brain than on the body.”
Source: The Telegraph and CNET