Man,machine,and in between

From computers and scanners to mobile devices, an increasing number of humans spend much of their conscious lives interacting with the world through electronics, the only barrier between brain and machine being the senses - sight, sound, and touch - through which humans and devices interface. But remove those senses from the equation, and electronic devices can become our eyes, ears and even arms and legs, taking in the world around us and interacting with it through software and hardware.

This is no mere prediction. Brain-machine interfaces are already clinically well established - for example, in restoring hearing through cochlear implants. And patients with end-stage Parkinson's disease can be treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS). Current experiments on neural prosthetics point to the enormous future potential of similar interventions, whether retinal or brain-stem implants for the blind or brain-recording devices for controlling prostheses.