Monkeys Control Virtual Arms With Their Thoughts

Researchers at Duke University have trained monkeys to move virtual arms by using nothing but their thoughts

Two monkeys, which were studied at the university's Center for Neuroengineering, learned to direct the virtual hands of a monkey avatar on a computer screen without moving any part of their real bodies. Duke said it's the first-ever two-way interaction between a primate brain and a virtual body, according to a release.

In the virtual world, the monkeys guided the avatar's hands toward several virtual objects, which were all visually the same, but had different artificial textures that could only be detected when virtually touched. Once they successfully guided the avatar's hands to the objects, the animals were able to distinguish between the various textures. Read more...