User:1sfoerster/enes100/fall2014/Cloth wiring

Problem
The headjack illustrated in the Matrix has actually been [Wikipedia:Brain_implant|made and implanted] into people's heads underneath the skull and into the brain. The trouble is that the brain grows into it and then begins to isolate it .. loose contact with it. Servicing this through surgery every 5 or 20 years involves cutting out brain tissue .. so it is not realistic.

Cochlear hearing stimulates nerves as does the Oculus Rift (owned by facebook). So getting information into the brain is fairly easy. It is the feedback from the brain that is difficult. Nerves are a single cell that can be a meter or more in length. Interfacing with them is difficult. The most successful strategy to day is in people that have lost their arms. The nerves that normally go to the hand and arm muscles are surgically re-routed to control muscles in the [[Wikipedia:Pectoralis_major_muscle|pects]. So when a person tries to move the muscles in what was their hand causes tiny muscles in the pects to contract. These contractions can be picked up through the skin, fed into a computer and used to control a prosthetic.

The problem with nerves is that they are tiny, week electrical circuits. The heart signal displayed on a monitor is actually a collection of many nerve cells firing at different moments all mixed together. The probes used for an ECG and an EEG require a paste that makes the connection to be served almost daily.

Conceive
The wearable electronics market is exploding. There are devices being experimented with that capture mood and other gross body symptoms that we don't have conscious control over.

Find a conductive tattoo ink. It exists .. some current ink is conductive and causes problems in MRI's. So the goal would be to cover the body in a grid imbedded in removable clothes that can be connected to electronics. Use this to train someone to control the electronics through bio feedback.

This may be very successful since much what goes on in our brains is outside our consciousness. But fine control appears to be learned in the first year of life. When the same nerves that controlled a hand are used to control a prosthetic, a person can pick up stuff in less than a video hour of fitting. When different nerves are used, training can last years.