Scientists reveal brain interface that can control a cursor accurately enough to allow the paralysed to type and control a wheelchair
- Could lead to revolutionary new products for the paralysed
- Monkeys were able to control the on screen cursor in experiments
- Could replace eye and head tracking systems currently used
Researchers have unveiled a new system that allows an on screen cursor to be controlled by brainwaves.
They hope it could help the paralysed communicate and even control a wheelchair.
The system uses a new algorithm tested on monkeys to control the cursor.
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In an experiment, monkeys use their brainwaves to accurately move a cursor over blinking dots on a computer screen. The research may lead to devices such as a wheelchair that paralyzed people can drive with their own brain waves.
Brain-controlled prostheses currently work with access to a sample of only a few hundred neurons but need to estimate motor commands that involve millions of neurons.
This means tiny errors in the sample – neurons that fire too fast or too slow – reduce the precision and speed of thought-controlled keypads.
The new system, developed by Krishna Shenoy, a Stanford professor of electrical engineering, makes brain-controlled prostheses more precise.
It analyses the neuron sample and makes dozens of corrective adjustments to the estimate of the brain's electrical pattern – all in the blink of an eye.
Shenoy's team tested a brain-controlled cursor meant to operate a virtual keyboard.
The system is intended for people with paralysis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS degrades one's ability to move.
The thought-controlled keypad would allow a person with paralysis or ALS to run an electronic wheelchair and use a computer or tablet.
'Brain-controlled prostheses will lead to a substantial improvement in quality of life,' Shenoy said.
'The speed and accuracy demonstrated in this prosthesis results from years of basic neuroscience research and from combining these scientific discoveries with the principled design of mathematical control algorithms.'
The new corrective technique is based on a recently discovered understanding of how monkeys naturally perform arm movements.
The researchers studied animals that were normal in every way.
The monkeys used their arms, hands and fingers to reach for targets presented on a video screen.
What the researchers sought to learn through hundreds of experiments was what the electrical patterns from the 100- to 200-neuron sample looked like during a normal reach.
In short, they came to understand the 'brain dynamics' underlying reaching arm movements.
'These brain dynamics are analogous to rules that characterize the interactions of the millions of neurons that control motions,' said Jonathan Kao, a doctoral student in electrical engineering and first author of the Nature Communications paper on the research.
They enable us to use a tiny sample more precisely.'
In their current experiments, Shenoy's team members distilled their understanding of brain dynamics into an algorithm that could analyze the measured electrical signals that their prosthetic device obtained from the sampled neurons.
The algorithm tweaked these measured signals so that the sample's dynamics were more like the baseline brain dynamics.
The goal was to make the thought-controlled prosthetic more precise.
The system is just as accuate as a computer mouse.
Thought-controlled keypads are not unique to Shenoy's lab. Other brain-controlled prosthetics use different techniques to solve the problem of sampling error. Of several alternative techniques tested by the Stanford team, the closest resulted in 23 targets in 30 seconds.
The goal of all this research is to get thought-controlled prosthetics to people with ALS.
Today these people may use an eye-tracking system to direct cursors or a 'head mouse' that tracks the movement of the head.
Both are fatiguing to use.
Neither provides the natural and intuitive control of readings taken directly from the brain.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently gave Shenoy's team the green light to conduct a pilot clinical trial of its thought-controlled cursor on people with spinal cord injuries.
'This is a fundamentally new approach that can be further refined and optimized to give brain-controlled prostheses greater performance and therefore greater clinical viability,' Shenoy said.
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