Or maybe these chips are just recording or giving electrical impulses or something like that.
That is about the extent of what we can do at this time, (from what I understand). A few years ago, scientists put some probes into a monkey's brain, and were able to translate the electric impulses into a message, which they then used to move a robotic arm. No, they were not reading the monkey's thoughts. They were reading the product of the monkey's thoughts: the firing of about 100 motor neurons. For instance, if the monkey thought "move arm left," nothing would happen to the robot. The monkey would have to actually try to move its own arm in order to produce a readable signal. I posted the link about this on page 11. Point is, there really isn't anyway to transalte what each individual neuron is doing. This would be neccesary if one wanted to truly link a brain and a computer. It is like moegreche said:
We can see the effects of brain activity, sure. But can we see the activity itself?
Apparently, there are games that use the human mind. There is one that is used as a children's game, where your mind basically acts as the one-button control to a rather simple game. There have been much more complex games using this mechanic, from the simple Ping Pong game to far beyond.
