Brain-machine interfaces: Bidirectional communication at last

A prosthetic limb controlled by brain activity can partially recover the lost motor function. Neuroscientists asked whether it was possible to transmit the missing sensation back to the brain by stimulating neural activity in the cortex. They discovered that not only was it possible to create an artificial sensation of neuroprosthetic movements, but that the underlying learning process occurs very rapidly. These finding were obtained by resorting to imaging and optical stimulation tools.