A Brief Tour Through the Wild West of Neural Interfaces

To most of us, zapping neurons with electricity to artificially "incept" memories, sensation, and movement still sounds crazy. But in some brain labs, that technology is beginning to feel old school. As a new review in Nature Biotechnology concludes: get off the throne, electrodes, there are plenty of other neural probes in town. Some require genetic engineering, and because of that have only been proven in experimental animals. But if history is any indication, brain-manipulation technologies don't tend to stay in the lab.