On the Future Use of BMI

The brain-machine interface (BMI) could just be one of the most helpful technological breakthroughs of our time. This technology comes in the form of a micro-processor installed in the brain that can assist mental processes, just as the name suggests. Its current uses are in rehabilitating people who suffer from various nerve-related ailments where in the case of stroke victims, it would allow them to regain control over regions of their body previously lost [1], whether limbs, neck or facial muscles and in the case of aphasia victims, BMI would provide speech synthesis [2], where the damaged Brocha and/or Wernicke regions normally responsible for linguistic processing are bypassed. These applications present the already available uses of BMI thus far, but can BMI technology offer other forms of processing assistance to the brain, even contributing to enhanced brain performance? One mental capacity that would be ideal to have is the ability for cross-linguistic processing; and so, we wonder whether BMI can be used for linguistic augmentation and enhancement. In this paper I consider BMI in its potential application in providing real-time translation.