This is truly bizarre. John Donoghue, a professor of neuroscience at Brown University in RI has developed a brain chip that reads brain signals and allow those who are paralysed the ability to control everyday objects by thought alone. That means one can think a t.v. on or off, alter volume, and even move a computer cursor just with the brain. The chip is inserted into the motor cortex and wires are fed into a computer which analyses the brain signals, the signals are then transformed into cursor movements, which gives the user the ability to control computers just by their mind. What about those who have a really active mind? Will they be able to control their impulses? It is one thing to think of something bad, and something quite different to actually DO something bad. But with this technology, perhaps there will be a thinner line here…
Seems to me if the implant is reading signals in the motor cortex, there should be no problem with uncontrolled impulses, any more than with real motion. After all, the muscles read their signals from the same location (mostly). Plugging into some other part of the brain associated with emotion, for example, could produce unpredictable results. (Feeling pressured at work causes your computer to delete ALL your email!)
I remember someone telling me about a tug-of-war game similar to this, where the stronger the brainwaves, the more you would pull the little ball towards you. The irony was (if I recall the story correctly) that the more relaxed you were, the stronger your brainwaves tended to be, so as you started to lose and worry about losing you inevitably made it worse.