Implant to allow telepathic communication
On Oct. 26, prominent Cornwall-on-Hudson resident, David Redden, received a revolutionary brain implant that will allow him to communicate telepathically with a computer. Redden, who lives with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a mute quadriplegic who uses a sophisticated eye-tracking computer to communicate. He was a prime candidate for this futuristic way of communicating via thought alone and became only the second patient in the United States to receive the brain implant.
“I think we all realize we stand on the shoulders of giants,” said Redden, who used his computer to telepathically respond to questions submitted to him via e-mail. “This could never have happened without enormous strides in science and engineering.”
Redden was born on Jan. 23, 1949, in Canton, China, but his family left later that year under gun fire down the Pearl River. His father, who served as an American consul for the U.S. State Department, was transferred to Israel and later served as American consul general in London and Rome where Redden spent much of his youth. It was the home of the Colosseum and the Sistine Chapel which guided his future interest in art.
“I’d spent the last three years of high school in Rome and fell helplessly in love with everything about Rome, the magnificent ruins, the extraordinary galleries of paintings everywhere,” Redden said. “I was transfixed by the endless beauty of it all. So art history at university was a continuation of that love affair.”
Redden attended Wesleyan University where he obtained a degree in art history. In 1974 he began his auction career as a catalog trainee at Sotheby’s, joining the company to learn more about art and collecting. A year later he became an auctioneer. He later served as vice chairman of the company from Feb. 2000 to 2016 when he retired.
In 1978, Redden married Jeannette and seven years later the couple moved to Cornwall-on-Hudson where they raised two children — Stephen and Clare. Those who know Redden might argue his name is synonymous with many of the land conservation groups in the area because of his love for nature which initially stems from living in Naples, Italy, but grew exponentially when his family moved to the village.
“I was first drawn to Cornwall-on-Hudson by a classmate from Rome, Andre Ledoux, whose family had a house on Storm King Mountain for generations,” Redden said. ‘“The property across the road from his family had been semi-abandoned and he asked me to take a look. I was enchanted by the miniature castle-like house and the astonishing views of the Hudson River and Valley from 850 feet up. I was totally captivated by the beauty of the place. And that view over the valley taught me not only how lovely the land we lived in but how vulnerable it was to barbaric development, for example the brutal development scheme at Kenridge Farm (then known as Canterbury Brook) which Scenic Hudson thwarted.”
Redden went on to become chair of Scenic Hudson and served on the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum’s board each for six years. He’s been a part of the Hudson Highlands Land Trust, the Advisory Board of Riverkeepers, and the Board of Friends of Hudson River Park. He also chaired the Olana Partnership, Black Rock Forest, and the Black Rock Forest Preserve until his illness made it impossible to continue serving.
In 2015, Redden began experiencing problems like carrying heavy books and doing yard work with a chainsaw. Over the course of two years he saw half a dozen specialists who came up with a number of diagnoses such as Lyme disease, for example, before finally receiving an answer – ALS.
Unfortunately, Redden’s decline was fairly rapid. When he started having difficulty walking, a friend presented him with a bundle of canes used in Governor Averill Harriman’s final years.
“It reached a point where I could only use a wheelchair, but has now progressed far beyond that,” Redden said. “For the last two years I have been bed bound, unable to use my legs or arms. I have also entirely lost my voice and my ability to breath without a ventilator. I can only communicate with a highly sophisticated computer which I can operate with my eyes.”
Brain surgery became an option only fairly recently and was suggested by Redden’s primary ALS doctor, Dr. Neil Schneider.
“The medical team associated with the brain implant then put me through a battery of tests,including MRI scans, to determine whether my brain was still able to send non-operative signals to my feet and hands, which would be necessary to operate the electrodes. More than anything the Mt. Sinai team looked for enthusiasm for the revolutionary procedure.”
“It reached a point where I could only use a wheelchair, but has now progressed far beyond that.”
David Redden
Redden’s medical team included Dr. David Putrino, Dr. Noan Harel, Dr. Abbey Sawyer, and Marta Lapinska.
When Dr. Schneider revealed to his patient that he would be an excellent candidate for the experimental surgery, Redden couldn’t contain his enthusiasm to be patient number two and at the cutting edge of technology.
“I was very excited by the possibility of communicating with the world and operating computers remotely. It seemed like science fiction had become reality. Operating a computer with one’s eyes is slow and tedious and quite limited. The prospect of controlling machines telepathically seemed intensely exciting. If I could be at the forefront of this new science of communicating with machines and the outside world, I thought it would open up my life again and begin a new age of a better world for everyone.”
In an eight-hour operation, held at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, 12 surgeons, led by Dr. Shahram Majidi, implanted Redden’s brain with a package of electrodes connected to a tiny subcutaneous transmitter buried in his chest. Specifically, he had inserted in his brain a stent packed with electrodes, manufactured by Synchron, designed to pick up commands from the brain and relay them telepathically to a computer.
“It is not too much to say that this ushers in a dramatic new phase in human evolution, mind control over machines,” Jeannette said. “[Our] son Stephen jokes that he will be really impressed when his father can control a drone just by thinking of its movements.”
Redden ́s doctors say that is not an impossibility.
Two weeks removed from surgery, Redden is only at the beginning stages of the many months of training he will need to undertake in order to learn how to convey thoughts to a computer which he hopes will enable him to eventually carry on normal conversation. That training will begin next month.
“The training is essential and quite lengthy,” he said. “I’m in the very beginning stages but it has already given me new optimism about the future. I have completed the most arduous part, the operation itself, so now I’m prepared and equipped to walk into the future.”