Anyone want to be a cyborg? Yeah, it is only a chip at this stage, but they can measure impulses through the nerve directly. Which means you can correlate the behavior to actions directly. This impulse has these properties and caused this behavior. Repeat for each impulse. Then you can say after time, this kind of impulse caused this kind of behavior. Once you know that you can create the impulses and refine the properties until you have machines that can control human appendages, organs, etc.

UPDATE 2011-APR-10: It amuses me to tag this “hardware”.