An article in this week's Science, cognitive control signals for neural prosthetics, reports on how neurophysiologists have developed a method for eavesdropping on neurons in a cognitive brain area involved in planning future arm movements.

While today's first-generation neural prosthetics focus on decoding the intended hand trajectories from motor cortical neurons of paralyzed patients and then using these signals to control external devices, the second-generation devices described in this research appear to have the capability of monitoring a paralyzed patient's preferences and motivation. From the article:

"For example, a goal signal indicates the intention to reach for an apple, whereas a trajectory signal would indicate the intended direction of the hand movement during the reach. Another high-level signal of interest is expected value, which is used for making decisions. For instance, if an individual has two potential reach goals, an apple and an orange, and the subject prefers apples over oranges, there are signals in his or her brain that indicate this preference and will influence the decision to reach for the apple instead of the orange.

Future applications of cognitive-based prosthetics will likely record from multiple cortical areas to derive a number of variables. Moreover, online trajectory information can also be considered as a cognitive variable that can be decoded along with other cognitive variables."

While neuroelectronics are primarily in the research phase, their potential uses will be numerous as non-invasive brain monitoring techniques become less expensive and more accurate. Just think of the neurofinance applications.