Brain implant allows users to operate iPhones and iPads via thought control

New York-based Synchron, which makes a brain implant called “Synchron Switch” that allows users to operate iPhones and iPads via thought control, is also the first company to gain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to run clinical trials on a computer-brain implant.
Apple’s 10.9-inch iPad
Reed Albergotti for Semafor:

Rodney Gorham, a retired software salesman in Melbourne, Australia, sent me a text message the other day. He didn’t type, he didn’t speak. He used his brain.
I had asked Gorham, who suffers from the debilitating disease ALS, how he was doing. “Great,” he wrote on an iPad, using a device surgically implanted in his brain at Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Synchron has six patients using the device, called a “Synchron Switch,” and Gorham is the first ever to use it with an Apple product, the company said.
“We’re excited about iOS and Apple products because they’re so ubiquitous,” said Tom Oxley, Synchron’s co-founder and CEO. “And this would be the first brain switch input into the device,” he said.
An array of sensors made by Synchron called a “Stentrode” is inserted into the top of the brain via a blood vessel in a minimally invasive procedure. It’s controlled wirelessly using the Synchron Switch from the patient’s chest.
Oxley said the skills needed to implant the Stentrode are commonplace, and that level of simplicity is key to the company’s business strategy.

MacDailyNews Take: What a boon for people with motor function challenges!
[Attribution: 9to5Mac. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
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