Back in 2015, before Brexit, before Trump, before Macedonian internet trolls, before QAnon and Covid conspiracy theories, before fake news and alternative facts, the disagreement over the Dress was described by one NPR affiliate as "the debate that broke the internet." The Washington Post called it "the drama that divided the planet." If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. This helps support our journalism. The Dress was a meme, a viral photo that appeared all across social media for a few months.

First there was the keyboard, then touch and voice to control computing devices and apps. Researchers at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University in New York City announced "a scientific first" with their invention of a brain-computer interface (BCI) that translate human thought into speech with higher clarity and precision than existing solutions. The research team, led by Nima Mesgarani, Ph.D., published their findings on January 29, 2019 in Scientific Reports, a Nature research journal. A brain-computer interface is a bidirectional communication route between a brain and computer. Many BCI research projects are centered on neuroprosthetic uses for those who have lost or impaired movement, vision, hearing, or speech, such as those impacted by stroke, spinal cord injuries, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), aphasia (speech impairment due to brain damage), cochlear damage, and locked-in syndrome.