Deep in your brain there are probably several thousand neurons that will respond only to the sight of Lady Gaga. Several thousand others probably only crackle to the sight of Justin Bieber. It might be nice to reassign those neurons to loftier thoughts. For now, though, neurology can’t help you. What neurology can do for you (if you’re up for a little invasive brain surgery) is let you use those Gaga and Bieber neurons to control a computer.

In an unprecedented fusion of pop culture and neurosurgery, scientists at Caltech have invented a surreal brain-machine interface. The history leading up to this discovery goes back to the 1990s, when Itzhak Fried, a neurosurgeon at UCLA, began to collaborate with neuroscientists who