Get armed with brain power

An amazing invention which can tap signals from the brain has been unveiled recently in Canada...
and soon Indian students could be working on it
ou've lost an arm in a car crash and want to desperately get back to living the normal life. YYou go to a lab where they fit you with a prosthetic arm ­ without surgery ­ and ask you to `think' about moving it. You do the needful and gasp in amazement. Your arm obeys your brain and goes up. Two young biomedical engineering students at Ryerson University's Digital Media Zone (DMZ) in Toronto, Canada, Thiago Caires, 22, and Michal Prywata, 19, have come up with this brilliant device, an Artificial Muscle-Operated (AMO) Arm. Fitted with lithium-ion batteries, it is connected to a headset, which picks up the signals which the brain would have emitted to the lost arm. The artificial muscles in the pneumatic arm are then pulled by a small air compressor to carry out the command from the brain.
In an interview to the Global News Channel in Toronto, Caires and Prywata have said, “You bypass a lot of approvals because it's not really a medical device.“ It's the same as a cellphone, capturing signals from the brain instead of waves from a tower.
“It's a project that developed into a full company. The students (now in the US) have filed for patents,“ says Dr Sheldon Levy, president of Ryerson University, who is visiting India to announce the launching of a R5.95lakh (each) fellowship for bright Indian sparks who want to do research work in DMZ.
The university helps its students with patenting, legal advice, financing, networking with potential partners in the industry, etc. “We want the kids to not just graduate with a degree, but with a business as well,“ says Levy.
And how has the India trip been? “Amazing. I met this brilliant student in IITMadras and I wanted to pack him up in a suitcase and take him home. India has the talent,“ says Levy.