What It’s Like to Live With an Experimental Brain Implant

Scott Imbrie vividly remembers the first time he used a robotic arm to shake someone’s hand and felt the robotic limb as if it were his own. “I still get goosebumps when I think about that initial contact,” he says. “It’s just unexplainable.” The moment came courtesy of a brain implant: an array of electrodes that let him control a robotic arm and receive tactile sensations back to the brain. Getting there took decades. In 1985, Imbrie had woken up in the hospital after a car accident with a bro