Fill in the Blanks Body Builders ExcerptOnline version body builders by John E 1 swathed splitters emanate neurons bustle decode seizures electrodes neurological gregarious propped protrudes frigid It's a February afternoon , and I'm sitting in a hospital room in downtown Albany , New York , as a team of white - jacketed technicians about the bed of a 40 - year - old single mother from Schenectady , named Cathy . And they are getting ready to push the outer bounds of computer - aided " mind reading . " They are attempting to " imagined speech . " I have been led here by Gerwin Schalk , a , Austrian - born neuroscientist , who has promised to show me just how far he and other codebreakers have travelled since that day decades ago when David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel made history by listening in ? and decoding ? the patterns of firing in a cat's visual cortex . Cathy is epileptic and plans to undergo brain surgery to try to remove the portion of her brain that is the source of her . Three days ago , doctors lifted off the top of Cathy's skull , and placed 117 tiny directly onto the right surface of her naked cortex so they could monitor her brain activity and map the target area . While she waits , she has volunteered to participate in Schalk's research . Now , next to my chair , Cathy is up in a motorized bed . The top of Cathy's head is in a stiff , plaster - like , mold of bandages and surgical tape . And a thick jumble of mesh - covered wires from the opening at the top of her skull . It flops over the back of her hospital bed , drops down to the ground and snakes over to a cart holding $250 , 000 worth of boxes , amplifiers , and computers . An attendant gives a signal , and Cathy focuses on a monitor sitting on the table in front of her as a series of single words in a female monotone from a pair of nearby speakers .
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