Breanna Olson hasn’t been able to move the way she wants for two and a half years. That’s how long she’s lived with ALS, the degenerative nerve disease that strips away muscle control and, eventually, the ability to walk, talk, eat, and breathe. So when she stepped onto a stage in Amsterdam last December, she didn’t actually step. Instead, her brain did the work.
Using an EEG headset that measured her electrical brainwaves, Olson controlled a digital avatar that danced in real-time. According to BBC reporting, she described the moment as “exhilarating” and “magical.” For a woman who trained in ballet, contemporary, and jazz since childhood, it was a return to something she thought she’d lost forever.
“I never dreamed that I would be able to dance on stage again,” she told the BBC.
The technology behind this performance isn’t magic, but it feels close. Japanese tech firm Dentsu Lab, working with data company NTT, developed the interface that captures specific motor signals from Olson’s brain as she imagines certain dance movements. Those signals get translated into computer instructions, which then tell the avatar which movements to execute. It’s a direct line from intention to action, bypassing the failing nervous system entirely.
Why This Moment Resonates Beyond One Performance
What happened in Amsterdam is part of something bigger. Scientists and technologists are increasingly exploring how to restore agency and identity to people whose bodies are betraying them. It’s not just performance art. It’s a fundamental question about what we lose when disease takes our bodies and how we might reclaim pieces of ourselves through technology.
Neuralink made headlines when Noland Arbaugh, the first human to receive one of Elon Musk’s brain chip implants, told the BBC it allowed him to play video games again. Meanwhile, Yvonne Johnson, a 58-year-old living with MND, recently said that AI voice tools helped her regain part of her identity. These aren’t isolated experiments. They’re markers of a shift in how we think about disability and technology.
Olson acknowledges the learning curve. The technology demands intense focus. “You have to isolate your muscles and the noise around you and really focus inward,” she said in her BBC interview. It’s demanding work. But the payoff, for her, was worth it: a sense of freedom and expression that ALS had stolen.
The Accessibility Question Looms Large
Here’s where things get complicated. The project, called Waves of Will, exists because Dentsu Lab’s Naoki Tanaka recognized a gap. “There are many brainwave technologies and research all over the world, but most of them are very expensive and not accessible to everyone,” he told the BBC. That’s why they started building a brainwave interface that could be more widely available.
The ambition extends beyond dance. Mariko Nakamura of NTT suggested the technology could eventually power wheelchairs or remote controls. If true, that transforms this from a remarkable art project into infrastructure for independence. But it’s a big if. Technologies like this often start expensive and specialized. They trickle down slowly, unevenly, and sometimes not at all.
Olson wants to use her experience to help others with ALS and give them hope. That’s admirable and necessary. But hope needs to be paired with real access. Without it, Waves of Will becomes an inspiring story rather than a movement.
The deeper truth Olson discovered matters regardless. Her experience showed her, by her own account, “just how powerful the mind can be.” In a disease that progressively locks the body away, that realization might be as valuable as the technology itself. Whether that insight translates into systemic change, though, depends on whether the world decides that giving people back their expression is worth the investment.
