Most dramatically, that could help "locked-in" patients — those who've lost all muscle movement because of conditions like Lou Gehrig's disease or brainstem strokes.

Take a look at what other people have accomplished lately with signals from their brains:

A quadriplegic man in Massachusetts has shown he can change TV channels, turn room lights on and off, open and close a robotic hand and sort through messages in a mock e-mail program.

Seven paralyzed patients near Stuttgart, Germany, have been surfing the Internet and writing letters to friends from their homes.

At a lab in Switzerland, two healthy volunteers learned to steer a 2-inch, two-wheeled robot — sort of like a tiny wheelchair — through a dollhouse-sized floor plan.

And at labs in several universities, monkeys operate mechanical arms with just their brains. At the University of Pittsburgh, a monkey can feed itself chunks of zucchini and orange slices this way.

That is, my accuracy had climbed to around 65 percent. About 80 percent of people reach or surpass that level within 10 sessions. Frankly, it felt more like influence than control.