共用题干 第三篇

Controlling Robots with the Mind

Belle,our tiny monkey,was seated in her special chair inside a chamber at our Duke
University lab. Her right hand grasped a joystick（操纵杆）as she watched a horizontal
series of lights on a display panel.She knew that if a light suddenly shone and she moved
the joystick left or right to correspond to its position,she would be sent a drop of fruit juice into her mouth.
Belle wore a cap glued to her head.Under it were four plastic connectors,which fed
arrays of microwires一each wire finer than the finest sewing thread一into different regions of
Belle"s motor cortex（脑皮层）,the brain tissue that plans movements and sends
instructions. Each of the 100 microwires lay beside a single motor neuron（神经元）.When
a neuron produced an electrical discharge,the adjacent microwire would capture the current
and send it up through a small wiring bundle that ran from Belle"s cap to a box of electronics
on a table next to the booth.The box,in turn,was linked to two computers,one next
door and the other half a country away.
After months of hard work,we were about to test the idea that we could reliably
translate the raw electrical activity in a living being"s brain一Belle"s mere thoughts一into
signals that could direct the actions of a robot.We had assembled a multijointed robot arm
in this room,away from Belle"s view,which she would control for the first time.As soon as Belle"s brain sensed a lit spot on the panel,electronics in the box running two real-time
mathematical models would rapidly analyze the tiny action potentials produced by her brain
cells.Our lab computer would convert the electrical patterns into instructions that would
direct the robot arm.Six hundred miles north,in Cambridge,Mass,a different computer
would produce the same actions in another robot arm built by Mandayam A. Srinivasan.If
we had done everything correctly,the two robot arms would behave as Belle"s arm did,at
exactly the same time.
Finally the moment came.We randomly switched on lights in front of Belle,and she
immediately moved her joystick back and forth to correspond to them.Our robot arm moved
similarly to Belle"s real arm.So did Srinivasan"s.Belle and the robots moved in synchrony
（同步）,like dancers choreographed（设计舞蹈动作）by the electrical impulses sparking in
Belle"s mind.
In the two years since that day,our labs and several others have advanced
neuroscience,computer science and microelectronics to create ways for rats,monkeys and
eventually humans to control mechanical and electronic machines purely by"thinking
through,"or imagining,the motions.Our immediate goal is to help a person who has been
unable to move by a neurological（神经的）disorder or spinal cord（脊髓）injury, but
whose motor cortex is spared,to operate a wheelchair or a robotic limb. Which of the following statements indicates the success of the experiment?