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Elon Musk’s announcement of the first human implant of a wireless brain chip by his neurotech company, Neuralink, has got people dreaming of a world they can control with their minds alone. But for lots of reasons, research carried out at the University of Texas’s HuthLab is potentially a bigger deal.
Combining the latest brain imaging technology with artificial intelligence, these brainy neuroscientists have translated the thoughts of people unable to communicate with the outside world into continuous natural language – without needing to implant anything. This is the closest we’ve yet come to reading someone’s mind.
Our latest Insights long read tells the story of how we got to this point, from the dodgy days of phrenology, via patients Tan and Walter K. And our authors explore what a brain-controlled future might really look like, not just for locked-in patients but for all of us (hint: it’s not all good news).
Senegal was once considered West Africa’s most stable democracy. Since independence from France, it has had three peaceful elections in which power went from the ruling party to the opposition. But all of that now appears to be threatened. President Macky Sall has postponed presidential elections that were due to take place later this month. Douglas Yates points out that none of Sall’s predecessors were able to stay in power beyond the constitutional limit –
though they tried.
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