Have you ever suffered a brain injury, stroke, or paralysis? Ever wished that you had a second motor cortex?

Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) are working on an implantable electronic chip that may help establish new nerve connections in the part of the brain that controls movement. Their most recent study, to be published in the Nov. 2, 2006, edition of Nature, showed such a device can induce brain changes in monkeys lasting more than a week.

This computer chip, dubbed the Neurochip, creates a brain-computer interface that records every movement sent from the motor cortex to the rest of the monkeys' body. Then the Neurochip converts those signals into a stimulus that can be fed back to the brain, creating new neural pathways that theoretically could be used if the motor cortex was damaged in some way.

We've still got a few questions, like exactly how this happens, how big physically this interface is, and when we should expect human trials. Of course, we've seen previous brain-computer interfaces before, but this one seems a bit more practical than strapping your head to some type of computer.