Before Berenzweig kicked off a demo of the wristband, he made sure to put distance between it and a nearby metal pushcart. The armband is quite sensitive to these impulses. Neurotransmitters run the length of that long neural pathway and turn individual muscle fibers on and off - the biological equivalent of binary ones and zeros. How does it do that? By measuring changes in electrical potential, which are caused by impulses that travel from the brain to hand muscles through lower motor neurons. This information-rich pathway in the nervous system comprises two parts: upper motor neurons connected directly to the brain’s motor center, and lower axons that map to muscle and muscle fibers. But unlike most peripherals, it uses differential electromyography (EMG) - an effect first observed in 1666 by Italian physician Francesco Redi - to translate mental intent into action. A ribbon cable connects the contacts to a Raspberry Pi in an open plastic enclosure, which in turn connects wirelessly to a PC running Ctrl-labs’ software framework.īerenzweig thinks of the armband as an interface much like a keyboard or mouse. The armband - a bound-together collection of small circuit boards, each soldered to gold contacts meant to adhere tightly to forearm skin - is very much in the prototype stages.

It was in 2015 at Columbia that Reardon, along with fellow neuroscientists Patrick Kaifosh and Tim Machado, conceived of Ctrl-labs and its lofty mission statement: “to answer the biggest questions in computing, neuroscience, and design.” After three years of research and development, the team produced its first product: an armband that reads signals passing from the brain to the hand. A few years later, he enrolled in Columbia University’s classics program, where he studied neuroscience and behavior and went on to earn his Ph.D. He took graduate-level math and science courses at MIT while in high school and spearheaded a project at Microsoft that became Internet Explorer. Thomas Reardon, the founder and CEO of Ctrl-labs (formerly Cognescent), was something of a child prodigy. What convinced those tech luminaries to fund the three-year-old neuroscience and computing startup, I’d soon find out, feels a little bit like magic.

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