Renowned physicist is helping to develop the iBrain, a tool that could one day read your mind

SCIENTISTS in California are developing a device to "hack" into the brain of Stephen Hawking and one day "read his mind".
 
The 70-year-old physicist, who lost the power of speech nearly 30 years ago due to motor neurone disease, is working with scientists at Stanford University to develop the ground-breaking tool called the iBrain.
 
Hawking currently communicates by what his team in Cambridge has dubbed the "cheek switch". An infrared sensor hanging off his glasses detects changes in light as he twitches his cheek to pick out words from a computer screen, which are then spoken by a voice synthesiser.
 
However, his facial muscles have deteriorated to the point where he can now only speak one word a minute.
 
The team at Stanford hope that the iBrain will enable Hawking to communicate just by thinking. "We'd like to find a way to bypass his body, pretty much hack his brain," says Philip Low, a professor at Stanford and inventor of the device.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/health-science/47620/stephen-hawkings-brain-be-hacked-scientists#ixzz1yrvFnW6d

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