Category: BCI

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BCI Brain

DARPA neural implant to enhance brain-computer connections

DARPA is leading the development of an improved  neural implant for connecting the brain to computers, using advances neuroscience, synthetic biology, low-power electronics, photonics and medical manufacturing.  Their goal is to to dramatically enhance  neurotechnology research capabilities and provide a foundation for new therapies.

The Neural Engineering System Design program aims to produce a miniaturized brain implant, smaller than one cubic centimeter in size, to improve data transfer. The  device would  translate between digital systems and the electrochemical “language” of the brain for more efficient communication.

NESD  is part of the BRAIN initiative and is led by Phillip Alvelda, who is “upgrading tools to really open the channel between the human brain and modern electronics.”

Current neural interfaces  use approximately 100 channels, each  aggregating signals from tens of thousands of neurons. The NESD program aims to develop technology to communicate directly with  one million individual neurons in a brain region.

Initial applications will include devices for those with sight or hearing impairments.  The system could feed digital auditory or visual information to the brain with  greater resolution and clarity than current technology.

Phillip Alveda will discuss this and other DARPA initiatives  at ApplySci’s NeuroTech San Francisco conference on April 6th.

Wearable Tech + Digital Health San Francisco – April 5, 2016 @ the Mission Bay Conference Center

NeuroTech San Francisco – April 6, 2016 @ the Mission Bay Conference Center

Wearable Tech + Digital Health NYC – June 7, 2016 @ the New York Academy of Sciences

NeuroTech NYC – June 8, 2016 @ the New York Academy of Sciences

 

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BCI Brain

EEG device enables thought controlled car

Duan Feng of Nankai University, in collaboration with Great Wall Motor, has developed a car that can be controlled with the brain.  A 16 sensor EEG device allows a driver to move the car forward and backward, stop, and lock and unlock the vehicle. At this point, fully operating the car with thoughts is not possible.

According to researcher Zhang Zhao, the goal is to create a way for the disabled to drive, and aid healthy people with a more “intellectualized driving mode.”

Click to view Reuters video.

Wearable Tech + Digital Health San Francisco – April 5, 2016 @ the Mission Bay Conference Center

NeuroTech San Francisco – April 6, 2016 @ the Mission Bay Conference Center

Wearable Tech + Digital Health NYC – June 7, 2016 @ the New York Academy of Sciences

NeuroTech NYC – June 8, 2016 @ the New York Academy of Sciences

 

 

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BCI Brain

Faster, noninvasive BCI speller system

Tsinghua University researchers have developed  a noninvasive brain-computer interface with the fastest information transfer rate to date.   The system is based on  steady-state visual evoked potentials, where a speller system detects a user’s gaze direction to a target a character.

Frequency and phase of stimulation signals were precisely encoded in single-trial SSVEPs. A user-specific decoding algorithm adjusted to individual differences in visual latency. Interference from noisy EEG signals was addressed with a visual latency estimation approach.

In online spelling performance among subjects, the mean spelling rate was 50 to 60 characters per minute, with an information transfer rate of 4.5 to 5.5 bits per second.  This is much faster than existing noninvasive BCI spelling systems.

NEUROTECH SAN FRANCISCO – APRL 6, 2016 @ THE MISSION BAY CONFERENCE CENTER

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BCI Brain

DARPA peripheral nerve modulation project launches

In September, 2014, ApplySci described DARPA’s proposed ElectRX (Electrical Prescriptions) project.  The agency has now selected 7 research teams  to begin work on the program, which is lead by Douglas Weber.  The goal is to develop a closed-loop system to treat disease by modulating the activity of peripheral nerves. The teams will work to develop a system, to be tested in human clinical trials, to treat chronic pain, inflammatory disease, post-traumatic stress and other illnesses.

The selected teams and their foci follow:

  • Circuit Therapeutics (Menlo Park), a start-up co-founded by Karl Deisseroth and Scott Delp, plans to further develop its experimental optogenetic methods for treating neuropathic pain, building toward testing in animal models before seeking to move to clinical trials in humans.
  • A team at Columbia University (New York), led by Elisa Konofagou, will pursue fundamental science to support the use of non-invasive, targeted ultrasound for neuromodulation. The team aims to elucidate the underlying mechanisms that may make ultrasound an option for chronic intervention, including activation and inhibition of nerves.
  • A team at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health (Australia), led by John Furness, will seek to map the nerve pathways that underlie intestinal inflammation, with a focus on determining the correlations between animal models and human neural circuitry. They will also explore the use of neurostimulation technologies based on the cochlear implant —developed by Cochlear, Inc. to treat hearing loss, but adapted to modulate activity of the vagus nerve in response to biofeedback signals—as a possible treatment for inflammatory bowel disease.
  • A team at the Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), led by Jiande Chen, aims to explore the root mechanisms of inflammatory bowel disease and the impact of sacral nerve stimulation on its progression. The team will apply a first-of-its-kind approach to visualize intestinal responses to neuromodulation in animal models.
  • A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge), led by Polina Anikeeva, will aim to advance its established work in magnetic nanoparticles for localized, precision in vivo neuromodulation through thermal activation of neurons in animal models. The team’s work will target the adrenal gland and the splanchnic nerve circuits that govern its function. To increase specificity and minimize potential side effects of this method of stimulation, the team seeks to develop nanoparticles with the ability to bind to neuronal membranes.
  • A team at Purdue University (Indiana), led by Pedro Irazoqui, will leverage an existing collaboration with Cyberonics to study inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract and its responsiveness to vagal nerve stimulation through the neck. Validation of the mechanistic insights that emerge from the effort will take place in pre-clinical models in which novel neuromodulation devices will be applied to reduce inflammation in a feedback-controlled manner. Later stages of the effort could advance the design of clinical neuromodulation devices.
  • A team at the University of Texas, Dallas, led by Robert Rennaker and Michael Kilgard, will examine the use of vagal nerve stimulation to induce neural plasticity for the treatment of post-traumatic stress. As envisioned, stimulation could enhance learned behavioral responses that reduce fear and anxiety when presented with traumatic cues. Dr. Rennaker is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Liberia, Kuwait and Yugoslavia.

    NEUROTECH SAN FRANCISCO CONFERENCE – APRIL 6, 2016 @ THE MISSION BAY CONFERENCE CENTER

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BCI

Paraplegic walks, lightly supported, for 12 feet, with BCI triggered muscle stimulation

UC Irvine BCI research has enabled a a paraplegic to walk, with support,  for 12 feet, without an exoskeleton.   The hope is that this will lead to a new generation of BCI stimulation technology that will allow the disabled to walk for longer periods with minimal support. The study was led by Samueli School of Engineering‘s  Zoran Nenadic and An Do.

A computer linked the 28 year old man’s  brain to his legs over a Bluetooth connection, bypassing the severed region of his spinal cord. EEG derived brain signals were relayed to electrodes on his knee, triggering walking movements.

Prior to the experiment, the man underwent extensive training to strengthen his muscles and learn to control a virtual avatar using the BCI device. He also made similar movements in the lab while slightly suspended.

The team would like to miniaturize and implant the EEG components in the brain.  They believe that this could give patients more precise control the and the ability to “sense” pressure.

View UC Irvine video here.

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BCI Brain

Brain-to-brain link allows one person to read another’s thoughts

University of Washington researchers used a direct brain-to-brain connection to enable pairs of participants to play a question-and-answer game by transmitting signals from one brain to the other over the Internet. The experiment is thought to be the first to show that two brains can be directly linked to allow one person to guess what’s on another person’s mind.

Lead author Andrea Stocco believes  that “This is the most complex brain-to-brain experiment that’s been done to date in humans. It uses conscious experiences through signals that are experienced visually, and it requires two people to collaborate.”  Chanel Prat, Darbey Losey, Jeneva Cronin, Joseph Wu and Justin Abernathy co-authored the paper.

The study builds on the UW team’s 2013 experiment demonstrating a direct brain-to-brain connection between humans. Other scientists have connected the brains of rats and monkeys, and transmitted brain signals from a human to a rat, using electrodes inserted into animals’ brains. The UW team used noninvasive technology to send a person’s brain signals over the Internet to control the hand motions of another person.

Click to watch the University of Washington video.

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BCI Brain Prosthetics

Biocompatible neural prosthetics

Spinal injury patients, and those with lost limbs, sometimes have neural prosthetic devices implanted in an attempt to regain independence.  They are used for deep brain stimulation and brain controlled external prosthetics.  However, neural prosthetics are often rejected by the immune system, and can  fail because of a mismatch between soft brain tissue and rigid devices.

University of Pennsylvania‘s Mark Allen and colleagues have created an implantable neural prosthetic device that is biocompatible and replaces silicon and noble metal. The goal is to avoid immune-system rejection, failures due to tissue strain, neurodegeneration, and decreased fidelity of recorded neural signals.

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Assistive Technologies BCI Brain

Continuously correcting BCI technique improves precision

Stanford‘s Krishna Shenoy has developed a more precise brain-controlled cursor for a virtual keyboard using a technique that continuously corrects brain readings.

An algorithm analyzes the measured electrical signals that a prosthetic device obtained from sampled neurons. It adjusts  the signals so that the sample’s dynamics were more like baseline brain dynamics.

The thought-controlled keypad would allow a person with paralysis or ALS to run an electronic wheelchair and use a computer or tablet. Today an eye-tracking system is used to direct cursors, or a “head mouse, ” which tracks the movement of the head.  Both are fatiguing, and  neither provides the natural and intuitive control of readings taken directly from the brain.

Stanford University video detailing single trial dynamics of motor cortex and their applications to brain-machine-interfaces:

This video includes two clips. In the first, flashing targets on a virtual keypad are hit by monkeys (not shown) using their hands. The second clip also shows targets being hit. But this time, the motion is directed by an experimental device that taps into the monkey’s brain. This device discerns their intention to hit the target and translates this thought into an electronic command that controls a virtual cursor. In the first clip the monkeys hit 10 targets in 9.9 second with their hands. It takes 11.4 seconds to hit 10 targets using the thought-control device.

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Assistive Technologies BCI Brain

Thought controlled telepresence robot

EPFL‘s José del R. Millán is developing a brain-computer interface that allows those with paralysis or limited mobility to control telepresence robots.   The goal is for the robot  to assist the disabled with daily tasks, helping restore a feeling of independence.

9 disabled people, and 10 people without disabilities, from 3 countries, wore hats with electrodes that analyze brain signals. Their thoughts were communicated to the robot in real time from their country. Because of its video camera, screen and wheels, the robot was able to film as it moved, while displaying the face of the remote pilot via Skype. The person at the controls, as if moving in place of the robot, was able to interact with whomever the robot encountered.  The robot is able to avoid obstacles by itself, even when told not to.

Quadriplegic users were able to perform complex tasks, remotely, using only their thoughts. The study revealed no difference in piloting ability between mobile and disabled subjects.

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BCI Brain

Real time brain-to-brain interface demonstrated

In another Nicolelis Lab breakthrough,  networks formed by multiple animal brains, cooperating and exchanging information in real time through brain-to-brain interfaces, was demonstrated. The “Brainet” technology could provide the core of a new organic computer.

In the recent study, four adult rat brains were interconnected. Brainets  concurrently recorded extracellular electrical activity generated by cortical neurons from multiple rats implanted with multi-electrode arrays. Cortical neuronal activity was recorded and analyzed in real time, and delivered to the somatosensory cortices of other animals using intracortical microstimulation.

Brainet architectures solved several computational problems, including discrete classification, image processing, storage and retrieval of tactile information, and weather forecasting.

Brainets consistently performed at the same or higher levels than single rats. Nicolelis believes that Brainets could be used to investigate animal social behaviors and to test applications of organic computers.

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BCI Brain Signal Processing

Spoken sentences recreated from brain activity patterns

KIT‘s Tanja Schultz has reconstructed spoken sentences from brain activity patterns.

Speech is produced in the cerebral cortex. Associated brain waves can be  recorded with surface electrodes. Schultz reconstructed basic units, words, and complete sentences from brain waves, and generated corresponding text.

This was achieved by a combination of advanced signal processing and automatic speech recognition.  Speech was continuously decoded  and transformed into a textual representation. Cortical information was combined with linguistic knowledge and machine learning algorithms to extract the most likely word sequence. Brain-to-Text is currently based on audible speech. The goal is to be able to recognize speech from thought alone.

WEARABLE TECH + DIGITAL HEALTH NYC 2015 – JUNE 30 @ NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.  REGISTER HERE.

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BCI Brain Prosthetics

Intent controlled robotic arm with neuroprosthetic implant

Caltech and Keck researchers implanted neuroprosthetics in a part of the brain that controls the intent to move, with the goal of producing more natural and fluid motions.   The study, published in Science, was led by Richard Andersen.  A quadriplegic implanted with the device was able to perform a fluid handshaking gesture and  play “rock, paper, scissors” using a separate robotic arm.

Andersen  and colleagues improved the versatility of movement that a neuroprosthetic can offer by recording signals from  the PPC brain region.  He said: “The PPC is earlier in the pathway (than the motor-cortex, a target of earlier neuroprosthetics,) so signals there are more related to movement planning—what you actually intend to do—rather than the details of the movement execution.  We hoped that the signals from the PPC would be easier for the patients to use, ultimately making the movement process more intuitive. Our future studies will investigate ways to combine the detailed motor cortex signals with more cognitive PPC signals to take advantage of each area’s specializations.”

WEARABLE TECH + DIGITAL HEALTH NYC 2015 – JUNE 30 @ NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.  REGISTER HERE.