On an otherwise routine July day, inside a laboratory at Duke University, two rhesus monkeys sat in separate rooms, each watching a computer screen that featured an image of a virtual arm in two-dimensional space. The monkeys' task was to guide the arm from the center of the screen to a target, and when they did so successfully, the researchers rewarded them with sips of juice. But there was a twist. The monkeys were not provided with joysticks or any other devices that could manipulate the arm. Rather, they were relying on electrodes implanted in portions of their brains that influence movement.

If the past is any guide, the thrilling future of neuroscience has already arrived, but most of us just haven't noticed it yet. With previous scientific breakthroughs that elevated the human condition--such as the discovery that bacteria cause infectious disease (leading to antiseptics and antibiotics) and the discovery that silicon integrated circuits could be made inexpensively (fueling the digital revolution)--key discoveries emerged decades before anyone, let alone leading scientists, grasped their full importance. Ignaz Semmelweis discovered that "cadaverous particles" (bacteria) caused disease in 1848, over 20 years before antiseptic techniques to combat infection were adopted. The integrated circuit and Complimentary Metal on Silicon (CMOS) developments in 1958 and 1963, respectively, occurred long before these discoveries made possible Moore's Law (digital circuit performance doubles every 18 months), personal computers, mobile phones, and the World Wide Web. I believe that developments comparable to previous seminal scientific breakthroughs have already occurred in neuroscience, but most of the world hasn't realized it yet for a number of reasons, chief among them that some of these earthshaking advances aren't actually in neuroscience at all, but in fields such as Computational Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Before describing the "non-neuroscience" advances that are propelling neuroscience into an exciting future, let me focus on recent key breakthroughs that are in the field of neuroscience.

The problem with AI is that while it's relatively easy to define the "A", the "I" remains elusive. We don't know what our own intelligence is, nor how we generate our familiar conscious experience, so it's tricky to know how we might create an artificial consciousness, or indeed recognise it if we did. Algorithms can knit together plausible conversation by sampling enormous numbers of exchanges between humans, but they have no greater understanding of those exchanges than would an enormous set of punch cards speaking through a bellows and a brass trumpet. The old Turing test now looks sadly inadequate. A machine-learning program might well counterfeit human speech and yet fail to recognise a snow leopard standing on green grass because the image contains no actual snow, and therefore the cat does not meet the definition.

The problem with AI is that while it's relatively easy to define the "A", the "I" remains elusive. We don't know what our own intelligence is, nor how we generate our familiar conscious experience, so it's tricky to know how we might create an artificial consciousness, or indeed recognise it if we did. Algorithms can knit together plausible conversation by sampling enormous numbers of exchanges between humans, but they have no greater understanding of those exchanges than would an enormous set of punch cards speaking through a bellows and a brass trumpet. The old Turing test now looks sadly inadequate. A machine-learning program might well counterfeit human speech and yet fail to recognise a snow leopard standing on green grass because the image contains no actual snow, and therefore the cat does not meet the definition.

It's said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Monkeys synchronise their brain activity during social interactions, possibly helping them to learn from each other. Understanding how this might work in humans could help groups of people work together more efficiently. To study brain activity in social situations, Miguel Nicolelis at Duke University Medical Centre, in Durham, North Carolina and his colleagues developed a wireless system that can record the neuronal activity from two monkey brains simultaneously. During the experiment, one monkey was propelled in an electric wheelchair towards a fruity treat, while a second monkey sat across the room and watched.

Humans must become cyborgs if they are to stay relevant in a future dominated by artificial intelligence. That was the warning from Tesla founder Elon Musk, speaking at an event in Dubai this weekend. Musk argued that as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, it will lead to mass unemployment. "There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot can't do better," he said at the World Government Summit. If humans want to continue to add value to the economy, they must augment their capabilities through a "merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence".

Humans must become cyborgs if they are to stay relevant in a future dominated by artificial intelligence. That was the warning from Tesla founder Elon Musk, speaking at an event in Dubai this weekend. Musk argued that as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, it will lead to mass unemployment. "There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot can't do better," he said at the World Government Summit. If humans want to continue to add value to the economy, they must augment their capabilities through a "merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence".

Humans must become cyborgs if they are to stay relevant in a future dominated by artificial intelligence. That was the warning from Tesla founder Elon Musk, speaking at an event in Dubai this weekend. Musk argued that as artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, it will lead to mass unemployment. "There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot can't do better," he said at the World Government Summit. If humans want to continue to add value to the economy, they must augment their capabilities through a "merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence".

What the real monkey thinks, the virtual monkey does.

When it comes to prosthetic hands, you can't beat the one Luke Skywalker receives in The Empire Strikes Back. Not only did that robotic limb allow him to wield a lightsaber with great dexterity, each of his fingers twitched when a robot poked them. Although real-life brain-controlled prosthetics that enable a person to, say, pick up a pencil continue to improve for amputees, limbs that can actually feel touch sensations have remained a challenge. Now, by implanting electrodes into both the motor and the sensory areas of the brain, researchers have created a virtual prosthetic hand that monkeys control using only their minds, and that enables them to feel virtual textures. Neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University in Durham, N.C., whose group has been developing so-called brain-machine interfaces, says that one of the pitfalls in these systems is that "no one's been able to close the loop" between controlling a limb and feeling a physical touch.