 The brain is probably the most sophisticated processor in the universe. Often people with paralysis will have a brain that is fully functional, and the reason they're unable to move is because the cable that carries the information from their brain to their body is cut. What we're trying to do is build a device called BrainGate, and BrainGate is actually a physical bridge that connects the outside world back to the data that's trapped inside the brain. The whole history of neuroscience is tied up in being able to create a brain-machine interface. The big problem really for us, although there are many challenges, is to be able to make sense of all of that information that's coming out of the brain. Now the stuff that comes out is really complicated, and this is where the science of massive data is really critical to us. Each little neuron, each little brain cell, emits a tiny electrical impulse, and it's sort of a dit-dit-dit-dit impulse kind of signal. So the code that comes out is effectively like a Morse code. We can code say I want to move left or I want to move right. We use a baby aspirin-sized chip that has 100 hair-thin electrodes that get implanted in the brain. All the bone and skin is closed, leaving only a connector about the size of a penny that sticks through the skin, which is where we attach and get the signals from the brain. So if we could understand everything about the brain, what impact would it have? When you understand the brain, do you have access to that person's consciousness? If you know every thought and feeling and desire and dream, do you? Is that the person? It's not about the technology, it's about the way people use it. This isn't wacky science fiction. In 2006, Matthew Nagel was the first person to have a brain gate system, and here's Matthew using the brain gate to play a video game. We even hooked him up to a mechanical, motorized hand. He hadn't controlled anything in more than two years at that point. He looked down, he went open, the hand opened, and he went, holy shit. That was a wonderful moment with him. It truly showed, even though it didn't really do anything important, it was a demonstration that small things for people who are otherwise fully incapacitated is really a big advance. We who are able-bodied forget that a lot of our dignity is tied up in being able to do things for ourselves. I had a degenerative bone disease as a child, so I spent some time in a wheelchair with a brace. It did give me a little flavor of what it's like to be limited in mobility. The essence of our humanity is taxed by that kind of life. We're doing the first steps in restoring dignity, going from being able to do nothing to being able to do something. One of the more rewarding aspects of this is working with these extraordinary people who have really overcome tremendous adversity, they have a strong will to go on and do things in their lives. This processing in our brain that occurs is some kind of computation that we don't understand. And that is maybe one of the greatest puzzles that's ever confronted us.