A monkey controls a robot and an avatar with its brain

Can we use our brains to directly control machines - without requiring a body as the middleman? Miguel Nicolelis talks through an astonishing experiment, in which a clever monkey in the US learns to control a monkey avatar, and then a robot arm in Japan, purely with its thoughts. The research has big implications for quadraplegic people - and maybe for all of us.

Our sense of self does not end at the last layer of our bodies, but it ends at the last layer of electrons of the tool that we're commanding with our brains.

~Miguel Nicolelis

Neuroscientist