Scientists at Harvard Medical School were able to successfully use the brain movements of one monkey to control the movements of another electronically generated monkey.
Movements of the real monkey's brain were read by brain scans, which were then electronically transmitted to animate the spinal cord of the fake monkey, or "avatar," the BBC reported Tuesday.
Scientists hope the experiment will help people who have been paralyzed move their bodies again. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.
"The goal is to take people with brain stem or spinal cord paralysis and bypass the injury," Dr. Ziv Williams, one of the scientists who conducted the experiment, told the BBC.
Spinal cord injuries can leave the brain permanently unable to send signals to the body, resulting in a person losing control of his or her body.
"The hope is ultimately to get completely natural movement. I think it's theoretically possible, but it will require an exponential additional effort to get to that point," Williams told the BBC.
For the study, a chip was inserted into the control monkey's brain that kept track of neuron activity. Next the control monkey was hooked up to the avatar. The connected control monkey was then able to control the avatar's arm when the brain scan read its signals. Scientists were able to achieve the same outcome in 98 percent of the tests, the BBC reported.
University of Warwick professor Christopher James lauded the experiment as "very important research," the BBC reported. However, he said it's nowhere near the same as being able to fully control another organism such as in the movie "Avatar."
"Some people may be concerned this might mean someone taking over control of someone else's body, but the risk of this is a no-brainer," James told the BBC.
"Whilst the control of limbs is sophisticated, it is still rather crude overall, plus of course in an able-bodied person their own control over their limbs remains anyway, so no one is going to control anyone else's body against their wishes any time soon," James told the BBC.
