Ultrathin Silk-Based Brain Implants

hatboyzero writes "University of Pennsylvania engineers have designed silk-based electronics that can stick to the surface of the brain, allowing for better brain-computer interfaces. The researchers say the silk-based devices are thin and flexible enough to reach previously inaccessible areas of the brain."

What can we access from the brain surface?

[!eopard]

The brain is a three dimensional matrix, however TFA only mentions wrapping around what appears to be the outer surface of the brain. How much of the brains' functions are available purely via the outer surface?

Bring it on

[Wolvenhaven]

Just what I want, pop ups in my head triggering all my senses. Although 90% of it will be porn so we shouldn't complain. Along with that, full sensory recording would be really cool.

Sci-Fi based implants

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I was thinking how much this was like the implant in John Crichton's head in Farscape.

Re:Oblig XKCD

[ultranova]

You know, if you connected a USB port to a brain, the chances are that you would learn to control USB devices with it eventually. You'd need some extra electronics to handle the interface - since USB is a high-frequency serial bus and brain uses low-frequency parallel bus - but this far, it seems that simply patching the signals from/to somewhere in the brains is sufficient for them to adapt.

That's only natural, really: converting signals between different levels of abstraction, inferring conclusions, and converting the results back to low levels is what intelligence is all about.