Brain–Computer Interfaces - Index of

Intracortical BCIs: A Brief History of Neural Timing 209
Fig. 2 The process by which intracortical signals are processed to determine when different
neurons are firing
companies and research groups are developing simplified spike sorting systems that
are either less accurate or don’t worry about spike sorting at all and just lump all
large spikes on an electrode together. Fortunately, different neurons that are picked
up on the same electrode often convey somewhat similar information. Therefore,
much useful information can still be extracted even without spike sorting.
5 A Brief History of Intracortical BCIs
The digital revolution has made the field of BCIs possible by enabling multiple
channels of brain signals to be digitized and interpreted by computers in real time.
Impressively, some researchers were already developing creative BCIs with simple
analog technology before computers were readily available. In the late sixties and
early seventies Dr. Eberhard Fetz and his colleagues implanted monkeys with microelectrodes
in the part of the brain that controls movements [1, 2]. These researchers