How thoughts could one day control electronic prostheses, wirelessly


Date:
August 5, 2020
Source:
Stanford School of Engineering
Summary:
The current generation of neural implants record enormous amounts
of neural activity, then transmit these brain signals through
wires to a computer. But, so far, when researchers have tried to
create wireless brain-computer interfaces to do this, it took so
much power to transmit the data that the implants generated too
much heat to be safe for the patient. A new study suggests how to
solve his problem -- and thus cut the wires.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Stanford researchers have been working for years to advance a technology
that could one day help people with paralysis regain use of their limbs,
and enable amputees to use their thoughts to control prostheses and
interact with computers.


==========================================================================
The team has been focusing on improving a brain-computer interface,
a device implanted beneath the skull on the surface of a patient's
brain. This implant connects the human nervous system to an electronic
device that might, for instance, help restore some motor control to a
person with a spinal cord injury, or someone with a neurological condition
like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig's disease.

The current generation of these devices record enormous amounts of
neural activity, then transmit these brain signals through wires
to a computer. But when researchers have tried to create wireless brain-computer interfaces to do this, it took so much power to transmit
the data that the devices would generate too much heat to be safe for
the patient.

Now, a team led by electrical engineers and neuroscientists Krishna
Shenoy, PhD, and Boris Murmann, PhD, and neurosurgeon and neuroscientist
Jaimie Henderson, MD, have shown how it would be possible to create a
wireless device, capable of gathering and transmitting accurate neural
signals, but using a tenth of the power required by current wire-enabled systems. These wireless devices would look more natural than the wired
models and give patients freer range of motion.

Graduate student Nir Even-Chen and postdoctoral fellow Dante Muratore,
PhD, describe the team's approach in a Nature Biomedical Engineering
paper.

The team's neuroscientists identified the specific neural signals needed
to control a prosthetic device, such as a robotic arm or a computer
cursor. The team's electrical engineers then designed the circuitry that
would enable a future, wireless brain-computer interface to process
and transmit these these carefully identified and isolated signals,
using less power and thus making it safe to implant the device on the
surface of the brain.

To test their idea, the researchers collected neuronal data from three
nonhuman primates and one human participant in a (BrainGate) clinical
trial.

As the subjects performed movement tasks, such as positioning a cursor
on a computer screen, the researchers took measurements. The findings
validated their hypothesis that a wireless interface could accurately
control an individual's motion by recording a subset of action-specific
brain signals, rather than acting like the wired device and collecting
brain signals in bulk.

The next step will be to build an implant based on this new approach
and proceed through a series of tests toward the ultimate goal.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Stanford_School_of_Engineering. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Nir Even-Chen, Dante G. Muratore, Sergey D. Stavisky, Leigh
R. Hochberg,
Jaimie M. Henderson, Boris Murmann, Krishna V. Shenoy. Power-saving
design opportunities for wireless intracortical brain-computer
interfaces. Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2020; DOI:
10.1038/s41551-020- 0595-9 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200805091847.htm

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