Inside the Race to Build a Brain-Machine Interface--and Outpace Evolution

In an ordinary hospital room in Los Angeles, a young woman named Lauren Dickerson waits for her chance to make history. She's 25 years old, a teacher's assistant in a middle school, with warm eyes and computer cables emerging like futuristic dreadlocks from the bandages wrapped around her head. Three days earlier, a neurosurgeon drilled 11 holes through her skull, slid 11 wires the size of spaghetti into her brain, and connected the wires to a bank of computers. Now she's caged in by bed rails, with plastic tubes snaking up her arm and medical monitors tracking her vital signs. She tries not to move.