Some excerpts from the article describing this amazing feat
(HT: The Pearcey Report):
A man paralysed from the neck down has shown he can open
email, control a TV and move objects with a robotic arm by thought alone.
The 25-year-old American patient, Matthew Nagle, had a computer-linked implant placed in his brain that enabled him to operate devices just by thinking about it....by imagining a particular task being carried out....
Known as the BrainGate Neural Interface System, it
consists of an array of electrodes that record neural activity from the motor
cortex of the brain.
Signals from the implant are decoded and processed by a
computer, allowing them to be translated into movement commands.
First, Mr. Nagle learned to move a computer cursor by
focusing his thoughts on the task....
He was able to open simulated e-mail, draw circular
shapes on the computer screen, play a simple video game called "neural
Pong", and change the channel and adjust the volume on a television.
Ultimately, he could open and close the fingers of an
artificial hand and use a robotic arm to grasp and move objects.
Initiated by his will to move (the initiation is not in
itself a physical process, nor is it determined by a physical process, but the
action is initiated by the will of
the man), Nagle's thoughts are then translated into something physical (the
electrical impulses in his brain) which are then translated by man-made
equipment into information used to move physical objects in the world.
The real mystery, known to God alone, is how the desires of our minds are translated into the physical impulses of our brains--how something non-physical interacts with the physical. Scientists can only build machines that measure the physical impulses, but they could never have access to the thoughts themselves. The truth is, the will to move parts of our body is not determined by physical impulses, it causes them.
The title of this post may have surprised you, but it shouldn't. You move a physical object every day with your mind--your own body!
Is it any surprise, then, that the God who created a way for your mind to interact with the physical machine of your body can Himself affect the physical world, though He is non-physical?



