The image of the person condemned to an inner existence of unimaginable torment through paralysis or inability to communicate despite sentience has resonated in the imagination of writers, philosophers, physicians and scientists, free to move and exchange their own ideas, down the ages; but the tantalizing idea that silent thoughts and intentions might be translated into action using extrinsic mechanical forces has seemed to lie in the realm of pure science fiction. Controlling machines and influencing one’s environment simply by thought was once the stuff of which dreams were made. Accordingly, in the early 1980s, Captain Pike—one of the protagonists of Star Trek—although completely paralysed, controlled his wheelchair with his brain. A blinking light flashed once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’ (www.trekkiesworld.de). Remarkably, however, new technology can now, at least to some extent, restore the basics of motor control and communication to people severely disabled by neurological disease or traumatic injury. There has been an expansion of research published recently on brain–computer interface and this has led to real advancements in assistive and therapeutic applications. BRAIN COMPUTER INTERFACES. PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE By Jonathan R. Wolpaw and Elizabeth Winter Wolpaw Eds. 2011. New York: Oxford University Press USA and Oxford: Oxford University Press ISBN: 978-0-19-538885-5 Price: $115.00/£85.00 Five years after the publication of Towards brain-computer interfacing (Dornhege et al. , 2007), the more recent volume on Brain computer interfaces. Principles and practice demonstrates the maturation of this field. Edited by Jonathan Wolpaw and Elizabeth Winter Wolpaw, this book describes the exponential growth in brain–computer interface research that started in the early 1990s with around one publication per year, expanding after 1995 and reaching 470 between 2008–10, so that we can expect at least 700 publications on this topic for 2011 until the end of 2013. And yet in this period, …
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Feb 16, 2023
Stan Oklobdzija 
Open Access