Chinese scientists have developed the world’s first open-source brain-computer interface on a chip, where the electrical activity of the brain is directly linked to an external chip, as part of ground-breaking research on the fusion of living and non-living things, Science and Technology Daily reported yesterday.
The MetaBOC system uses an artificial brain cultivated in vitro with stem cell technology to form a ‘brain-like organ’ that when coupled with electrode chips can interact with external information through encoding, decoding and stimulation-feedback, the report said, citing research by scientists from Tianjin University and Southern University of Science and Technology that was recently published in the international brain science journal Brain.
MetaBOC can instruct a robot through ‘mind control’ to avoid obstacles, track and grasp items as well as perform a variety of brain-like computing tasks, it added.