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The research, which will see the first inhuman trial at The Royal Melbourne
Hospital in 2017, was published Tuesday
in Nature Biotechnology.

Speaking to AFP, Oxley said that all the
other brain-machine interface technologies
had involved inserting an electrode directly
into the brain.

It shows the device could record highquality signals emitted from the brain's
motor cortex, without the need for open
brain surgery, based on research using
sheep.

He said the aim was for the new device to
work much like a cardiac pacemaker,
which is typically inserted without openheart surgery.
"The cardiac pacemaker is essentially the
classic bionic device -- it goes inside a vein,
it sits next to the heart and it works for a
lifetime," Oxley said.

Brain-machine interface is one of the main
areas of research in paralysis treatment.
In 2014, scientists in the United States said
they had demonstrated how a monkey
could use only its thoughts, transferred by
electrodes via a computer, to manipulate
the arm of a fully-sedated fellow primate.

"And we are essentially trying to do the
exact same thing for the brain. Go up a
vein, leave it there, and have a lifetime of
recordings coming out of it."

Two years earlier, a collaboration between
researchers in the United States and the
German Aerospace Centre enabled a
paralyzed woman to lift a drink to her lips
with a thought-controlled robotic arm.

It is hoped that the research, which
involved 39 scientists from the Royal
Melbourne Hospital, the University of
Melbourne and the Florey Institute of
Neuroscience and Mental Health, could
also be used to treat epilepsy, depression
and Parkinson’s.

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