ABSTRACT
That the Homo sapiens brain has structural and functional complexity, cognitive sophistication, and inventive toolmaking capabilities far beyond other known species is incontrovertible. What is debatable is who—or what—is, idiomatically, in the driver’s seat. While we typically assign that role to ourselves, a closer inspection of that perspective uncovers some questionable assumptions about how we define ubiquitous concepts such as self and mind—terminological conventions that intuitively appear concrete, but have no innate physical existence; rather, these and related linguistic devices are referential descriptions of our experience as self-aware beings. Here, I propose that the self-organizing brain itself (which evolved as a result of a surprisingly limited series of genetic errors and mutations in our distant ancestors) is at the helm; that it is also the source of the intentionally generated trends in human toolmaking over the millennia; and, ultimately, that neuroprosthetics are the result of the brain applying its toolmaking acumen to treat and augment itself. I therefore present a compact history of prosthetics and early treatments that foresaw neuroprosthetics; a current review of current neuroprosthetics; and future neuroprosthetics, including neurobiohybrids and bionanoprotonics.
