A woman paralyzed from the neck down can now grab a ball with a robotic arm – just by thinking about it.

Jan Scheuermann, who lost control of her limbs in 2003, was able to make complex hand movements using the robot arm. She successfully picked up and moved a variety of objects, from a tiny cube to a tube standing upright (see video).

The system, developed byJennifer Collinger at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and colleagues, uses two small electrode grids implanted in Scheuermann’s brain, in the region of the left motor cortex responsible for controlling her right arm and hand. The devices were connected to a computer, which analysed electrical brain activity picked up by 96 contact points within the grids. (1)

We like believing we are machines.
We like believing we can fix machines.

But it needs to have a soul to be human.
It needs to have a soul to understand you are not a machine.

The brain functions.
But the neurons are broken.
The soul thrives.
Only if the body is dead…