US regulators move on thought-controlled prosthetics

Patients can now guide robotic limbs using devices implanted in their brains. For the first time since accidents severed the neural connection between their brains and limbs, a small number of patients are reaching out and feeling the world with prosthetic devices wired directly to their brains. Earlier this month, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena implanted a person's brain with electrode arrays that read neural activity to control a robotic arm and stimulate the brain to deliver a sensation of what the arm touched. And since 2011, a team at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania has been working with a small number of people who control prostheses through neural implants. "It's moving quick at the moment," says Christian Klaes, a neuroscientist on the Caltech effort.