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A team of researchers from the University of Washington studied the brain's activity while controlling a cursor on a computer using the keyboard. The team discovered that reacting with a cursor causes brain signals to become stronger than the signals created during day-to-day activities. They are hopeful that their findings will help speed up the recovery time of patients that suffer from strokes. Further work needs to be done on researching the process of having someone imagine how to do something that they don't think they can do, such as imagining how to move your arm. After some practice, patients in the study were able to move the computer cursor without having to imagine how to move their arms first to perform the action. Their research was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA's graduate student research program, and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Practice Makes Perfect: Learning Mind Control of Prosthetics, discusses the study of using monkeys' brains to map neural processors for movement of their limbs. Sensors are embedded into the brain and a map is made based upon the electrical activity of neurons as animals are completing motor tasks. The application of this technology would benefit humans with prosthetics that would allow for fluid effortless control of their limbs.

It is called SmartHand and uses myoelectrial signals in the form of electrodes to move the motors in the prosthetic hand. The SmartHand is unique because of the sensory feedback the amputee is receiving. There are sensors on each finger that communicate with the muscles in the forearm which stimulate the brain to move the fingers of the prosthetic hand. The article discusses that the ultimate goal of SmartHand is to attach a neural network connection directly to the artificial hand through sensors.

A paralyzed patient implanted with a brain-computer interface device has allowed scientists to determine the relationship between brain waves and attention.