Technology that can establish a direct connection between human thought and computer operations has been a visionary proposition for decades. Now, thanks to the entrepreneurial efforts of some longtime researchers in the field, techniques that might help restore neurologically-impaired people's command over their Environment are nearing commercialization.

One effort is offering medical researchers a new window into the brain, allowing them to acquire specific neural activity with electronic precision so that the relation between thought and Motor action in the body can be decoded. The technology is being marketed as the Braingate neural contact system by Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc. But company founder John Donoghue, chairman of the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University, is looking well beyond diagnostics, positioning the company for a frontal attack on one of the most intractable problems in medicine: restoring function to people with damaged nervous systems.

Toward that end, Cyberkinetics recently acquired Andara Life Sciences Inc., whose founder, Purdue neuroscientist Richard Borgens, has developed an electronic method for stimulating Neuron growth. Cyberkinetics has also established an R&D agreement with a group at Case Western Reserve University that has developed an implantable electrode system for stimulating muscle movement. The FDA has already approved the Case Western system for use.

The techniques behind these initiatives are anything but overnight phenomena. Indeed, most of the work began in the 1970s, when medical researchers first began to make electrical contacts with neurons, analyzing the response with signal processors. Gradually, knowledge of how neurons communicate and process information has been acquired, even as electronic systems have grown more sophisticated. Now the fields are coming together to realize the "bionic man"—an idea that captured the public's imagination in the '70s even as researchers were working the problem in the lab.