In this week’s Bloomberg Businessweek;
Until the 1980s, scientists believed the brain interacted with limbs in a fairly rote, mechanical way: Certain neurons lit up when corresponding muscles moved. Schwartz was part of a Johns Hopkins University research team that found the brain was actually expressing an intentional behavior, like turning a doorknob, that he could read in the neuron’s electrical signals. “When you watch someone dancing … there’s a sort of beautiful coordination and precision and athleticism incorporated in the movement,” he says. “Those are the kinds of things we could find in this cortical activity.”
John Tozzi 