ABSTRACT
The electric sh was probably the rst bioelectric treatment. The experimental breakthrough by Galvani that led to the battery (Volta), the pioneering treatments of Benjamin Franklin, and the cardiac pacemaker have been the historical foundations of the neurocybernetic prosthesis (NCP). The NCP was invented and developed by Zabara utilizing the electrical properties of the vagus nerve as an entry channel into the brain.1 Norbert Weiner derived the term “Cybernetics” from the Greek to mean regulation and control in man and machine. The NCP was an attempt to accomplish this in “man” through control of an electromagnetic “machine.” The “machine” was, at least initially, to be based on the cardiac pacemaker; however, the goal of the NCP is very different. Whereas the cardiac pacemaker represents a driving function placed in or on the end organ (heart), the NCP is placed distal to the end organ (brain or body) and it communicates electromagnetically (vagus nerve stimulation [VNS], etc.) with cybernetic or regulatory functions.
