A research team led by Andrew Schwartz, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and an adjunct faculty member in the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, has enabled a woman with longstanding quadriplegia to control a human-like robot arm using two electrodes implanted in her brain.

Schwartz and his colleagues reported in The Lancet on the brain-computer interface (BCI) technology and the training programs that made it possible for Jan Scheuermann of Whitehall Borough, Pa., to move the arm, turn and bend a wrist and close a hand. Scheuermann was even able to feed herself a bit of chocolate.