"Character and personality changes are fairly pervasive with motor vehicle accidents, " he said, but added that the brain was changeable or "plastic" and repaired itself over time to varying extents.
Because, before it began, in a foiled attempt to escape a maximum security prison, he sharpened a plastic comb into a weapon and drove it through the eye and into the brain of Louis Pepe, a 42-year-old Bureau of Prisons guard.
The researchers got some brave specimens to move a mouse cursor by implanting plastic pads containing electrodes underneath their skulls, with the sensors sitting on the surface of the brain.