Scientists at the University of Wisconsin would tell you that you can. According to Brandon Keim at Wired, engineers at the university’s Neural Interfaces laboratory have been using the Wadsworth Center Brain-Computer Interface system, or BCI2000. The program, which is currently in use by scientists around the world, takes electrical charges from the scalp and translates them into instructions for a computer to move an onscreen cursor.

You can see a little of how it works in this video from the University of Wisconsin:

BCI2000 was developed by Wisconsin Neural Interfaces department head Justin Williams and Gerwin Schalk, a neural injury specialist at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health. Usually, Keim’s article said, instructions from the software are limited to one local computer screen. That’s great for helping people who need to communicate with people around them, but Wisconsin researchers believe there are other applications for the program.

Williams told Keim that e-mail is an inefficient use of brain-computer interfaces, because e-mail requires a person to find names in an address book and type out messages. Twitter works much better because it’s much easier to post messages for friends and family.

According to the article, Wilson said he will be installing the Twitter interface in 10 homes that have the BCI2000 running. The challenge is to get the program integrated into a person’s daily routine and help caretakers become familiar with the system so they can set it up without technical assistance.

Trials like this one with Twitter will help researchers improve the system to the point where one day it could operate prostheses, Williams told Keim. The BCI2000 is not currently available commercially.

For more on these topics, take a look at these articles:

How Brain-computer Interfaces Work
How Twitter Works
How E-mail Works