As humans step off their home planet into the surrounding solar system and beyond, they do not go alone. Machines have preceded them. And as people go into space, machines will go along. Of all the machines we have used and imagined, none have captured...

A brain-computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-machine interface, is a direct communication pathway between a human or animal brain (or brain cell culture) and an external device. In one-way BCIs, computers...

Imagine a machine that can sense what you think and act on your commands. Sound scary? Not so for people with paralyzed limbs or debilitating conditions such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). Machines like this could let them communicate and even...

Toward Brain-Computer Interfacing edited by Guido Dornhege, et al. MIT Press. 2007. 512 pages. $45. Interest in developing an effective communication interface connecting the human brain and a computer has grown rapidly over the past decade. The brain-computer interface (BCI) would...