The only person in this thread that thinks dirty is you. Really, someone is capable of some level of direct control over her environment for the first time in years and that's the only thing you can think of? Look at the video and watch that lady smile at the end and then ask yourself what your comment said about you instead of about her.
I think grantgrant has a point. I wonder what it's like to use an arm like that - she seems to be focusing hard on thinking "up" "down" "left" "twist" but as this stuff gets more powerful, how do you separate the signal from the noise? I have many thoughts bouncing around my head, but somehow my brain knows not to act on them.
Your muscles respond to your thoughts not because they pick out some random thought from all of them and decide to act on it. That wouldn't work at all. Your muscles are controlled by your brain in a feedback loop where your desire to make a particular movement gets compared with the actual movement you are making and then that movement is corrected. For something new or exceptionally delicate that is a full-time conscious job.
For something that you've done a hundred times before you more than likely have abstracted it away and have it 'on call' to the extent that it can be done as a subconscious task.
I don't know if you have a driving license or not but because driving is a skill that many people learn only well after they've become conscious of their environment it is my favorite example of this sort of abstraction. When you first learn to drive it is difficult and each and every movement is something that your conscious is fully engaged with. If you learn to drive in a stick-shift car it is not rare to have an instructor operate the clutch and the brake for the first couple of lessons because there is already so much for you to pay attention to.
Fast forward a decade or so and you're listening to your favorite tune and possibly working out some problem in your head while driving on the highway at a 90 miles per hour.
That's the power of how your brain is organized, it has an automated process for abstracting skills on board that allows you to build on top of things you've previously acquired but still allows you to focus on those same things long after they've become abstracted away if required.
The brain is a "parallel processor" in that distinct regions are responsible for different tasks. These arrays are recording from the primary motor area (M1) which directly controls output muscles. While this does require conscious control right now, it's not the case that irrelevant thoughts are likely to significantly alter the control signals sent to the arm.
