Couples' nervous system linked by implants in limbs

By SIMON COLLINS, science reporter

When Kevin Warwick lifted his finger, his wife Irena felt as if a bolt of lightning ran down her palm and into her own finger.

In what they billed as the first direct link between nervous systems, the couple had electrodes surgically implanted in their arms and linked by radio signals to a computer.

Blindfolded for the experiment, they could feel when their spouse's finger moved.

"For me, it was like my wife communicating with me," Dr Warwick said in Auckland yesterday en route to Dunedin's science festival.

The professor of cybernetics (automated control systems) at Britain's University of Reading claims to be the world's first cybernetic organism or "cyborg" - part-human, part-machine.

Although he had the electronic implant in his arm for just three months, and his wife for only a day, he is now building up to putting one in his brain within 10 years or so.

In his book I, Cyborg, Dr Warwick imagines that 50 years from now most human brains will be linked electronically through a global computer network.

"They can tap into it, call on its intellectual power, its memory, merely by thinking to it," he says.

"In return, the global network calls on its cyborg nodes for information or to carry out a task."

That technology is a long way off. For the experiment on the arm, the experts started with a device the size of a cigarette packet. This was far too big to insert surgically so they put a lot of the electronics in an external pack strapped to Dr Warwick's arm and connected by 100 tiny wires to the internal device.

The device, implanted in March 2002, looked like a square comb, 3mm by 3mm, with 100 sharp electrodes sticking out 1.5mm into his flesh.

Two neurosurgeons, who had practised on sheep, hammered the comb into the nerves in Dr Warwick's forearm under local anaesthetic. Miraculously, some of his nerve cells connected with the artificial electrodes.

During the next three months, he was able to teach a robot, via a computer, to mimic his arm movements.

For one experiment, he flew to New York, plugged his arm into a computer and could manipulate the robot back in Reading via the internet. He also allowed the robot to manipulate his finger in reverse.

His next priority is to develop a system for paraplegics who have lost nerves in their limbs but still have the brain nerves to control the limbs.

New Zealand International Science Festival