Not For Quite Some Time (Score 2, Interesting)

I work in a lab at University of maryland currently doing research into how the brain integrates audio information. For data collection we use microwire arrays hooked into a $25,000 neural Amp. The results are hard to deal with mainly because it requires about 400 insertions to draw an adequate map of the diffrent audio fields. Anyway, we are very far away from doing this in real life, let alone an opensource project. dont get me wrong, but in order to get good results you have to use the purest metal you can find, hook it into a amp that has been designed using extremely high quality parts that have an absolute minimum of signal degridation. Also, there is the problem of backround noise. we do our exparaments in a room lined with the magnetic equivalent of a faraday cage. some other promising research was posted by "new scientist" magazine. in their febuary 23 2002 edition they had an article about mind over metal and sucessful exparaments that transplanted the brainstem from rats into robots. the brain stems then allowed them to walk and do stuff. The site www.newscientist.com has an archive but you must be a member to view it. In the article they also go into remote controling a brain and the ethics of that. Though, ecause of ethics it is highly unlikely to have human trials anytime soon. However, Mr. roadkill stated on his list a dremel with a bone cutter bit. the irony of this is that we actually use such a thing when inserting implants.