Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 6

1.-Do you believe that we can use our brains to control machines?

Miguel Nicolelis: A monkey that controls a robot with its thoughts. No, really.
In a major step toward helping victims of paralysis walk again, researchers at
Duke University Medical Center today announced that they had proved
monkeys can use their brainpower to control the walking patterns of robots.
The Duke researchers, working with the Computational Brain Project of the
Japan Science and Technology Agency, implanted Idoya, a rhesus monkey, with
electrodes that gathered signals from her brain's motor and sensory cortex
cells as she ambled along on a specially built child-size treadmill. The
electrodes recorded the cells' responses as the monkey walked on the treadmill
at different speeds; simultaneously, sensors on Idoya's legs tracked their
patterns of movement. The information was transmitted in real time from their
lab in Durham, N.C., to control the commands of a five-foot-tall humanoid robot
in Kyoto, Japan.
The US military is looking for ways to insert microscopic devices into human
brains to help folks communicate with machines, like prosthetic limbs, with
their minds. And now, DARPAs saying scientists have found a way to do just
thatwithout ripping open patients skulls.
In the DARPA-funded study, researchers at the University of Melbourne have
developed a device that could help people use their brains to control machines.
These machines might include technology that helps patients control physical
disabilities or neurological disorders. The results were published in the journal
Nature Biotechnology.
In the study, the team inserted a paperclip-sized object into the motor cortexes
of sheep. This souped-up version, which the team calls a stentrode, is a stent
covered in electrodes and also sounds like it belongs in a cyborg. The
strentrode snakes its way into blood vessels through a catheter thats stuck in
the patients neck, rather than in the skull. Existing brain-machine interfaces
(BIMs) require cracking the patients skull open in a procedure called a
craniotomy. This involves removing part of the skull to access the brain. The
new development makes it easier to stick a computer chip or stentrode into a
patients head. Instead of open-brain surgery, the method of inserting a BMI
through blood vessels in the neck reduces the risk of inflaming tissue and other
risks involved in such horrifying, invasive surgery.
The team plans on testing the stentrode in humans sometime next year.
Humans have traditionally interacted with computers or machines by using
their hands to manipulate computer components. This kind of human-computer
interaction (HCI), however, considerably limits the humans freedom to

communicate with machines. Over the years, many attempts have been made
to develop technologies that include other modalities used for communication,
for example, speech or gestures, to make HCI more intuitive. Recent advances
in cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging technologies in particular have
allowed for the establishment of direct communication between the human
brain and machines. This ability is made possible through invasive and
noninvasive sensors that can monitor physiological processes reflected in brain
waves, which are translated online into control signals for external devices or
machines. Such brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) provide a direct
communication method to convey brain messages to an external device
independent from the brains motor output. They are often directed at
assisting, augmenting, or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor
functions. In BCIs, users explicitly manipulate their brain activity instead of
using motor movements in order to produce brain waves that can be used to
control computers or machines. The development of efficient BCIs and their
implementation in hybrid systems that combine well-established methods in
HCI and brain control will not only transform the way we perform everyday
tasks, but also improve the quality of life for individuals with physical
disabilities. This is particularly important for those who suffer from devastating
neuromuscular injuries and neurodegenerative diseases which may lead to
paralysis and the inability to communicate through speech or gesture.
university of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the
first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to
send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow
researcher. Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic
stimulation, Rajesh Rao sent a brain signal to Andrea Stocco on the other side
of the UW campus, causing Stoccos finger to move on a keyboard.
While researchers at Duke University have demonstrated brain-to-brain
communication between two rats, and Harvard researchers have demonstrated
it between a human and a rat, Rao and Stocco believe this is the first
demonstration of human-to-human brain interfacing. The Internet was a way
to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains, Stocco said.
We want to take the knowledge of a brain and transmit it directly from brain to
brain.
The researchers captured the full demonstration on video recorded in both
labs. On Aug. 12, Rao sat in his lab wearing a cap with electrodes hooked up to
an electroencephalography machine, which reads electrical activity in the
brain. Stocco was in his lab across campus wearing a purple swim cap marked
with the stimulation site for the transcranial magnetic stimulation coil that was
placed directly over his left motor cortex, which controls hand movement. Rao
looked at a computer screen and played a simple video game with his mind.
When he was supposed to fire a cannon at a target, he imagined moving his

right hand (being careful not to actually move his hand), causing a cursor to hit
the fire button. Almost instantaneously, Stocco, who wore noise-canceling
earbuds and wasnt looking at a computer screen, involuntarily moved his right
index finger to push the space bar on the keyboard in front of him, as if firing
the cannon. Stocco compared the feeling of his hand moving involuntarily to
that of a nervous tic. It was both exciting and eerie to watch an imagined
action from my brain get translated into actual action by another brain, Rao
said. This was basically a one-way flow of information from my brain to his.
The next step is having a more equitable two-way conversation directly
between the two brains. The cycle of the experiment. Brain signals from the
Sender are recorded. When the computer detects imagined hand
movements, a fire command is transmitted over the Internet to the TMS
machine, which causes an upward movement of the right hand of the
Receiver. This usually results in the fire key being hit.University of
WashingtonThe technologies used by the researchers for recording and
stimulating the brain are both well-known. Electroencephalography, or EEG, is
routinely used by clinicians and researchers to record brain activity
noninvasively from the scalp. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is a
noninvasive way of delivering stimulation to the brain to elicit a response. Its
effect depends on where the coil is placed; in this case, it was placed directly
over the brain region that controls a persons right hand. By activating these
neurons, the stimulation convinced the brain that it needed to move the right
hand.
2.- Do you believe that people can control bionic limbs or prosthetics
with their thoughts?
Hugh herr: The new bionics that let us run, climb and dance.
One big, robotic foot and then the other; that's how a man wearing a clunkylooking exoskeleton makes his way across the room. The machine's motors are
noisy and its movements are painfully slow, but these details seem to fade into
the background when you realize how the man is controlling the cumbersome
contraption: He's doing it with his mind.
The exoskeleton a robotic device that fits around the man's hips and legs
is part of a new technology being developed by researchers in Germany and
Korea. The other part is a dark cap on the man's head, covered with electrodes
that facilitate the connection between his brain and the machine. The man
wearing the exoskeleton in the experiment can walk on his own (he's one of the
participants in the researchers' newly published study), but the scientists think
their new mind-controlled device could one day be used by people who can't
walk such as those who have suffered severe spinal cord injuries, or people
with neurodegenerative diseases, like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
University of Houston engineer Jose Contreras-Vidal does some futuristic,

stranger-than-science-fiction research. Hes developed a brain-machine


interface to interpret brain signals and turn them into movement. With this
interface, he has created a bionic hand and a computer avatar that are
controlled by the user's mind.
But the centerpiece of his work is a thought-controlled exoskeleton to help
paralyzed people walk. For the past several years, Contreras-Vidal has been
working with the REX lower body exoskeleton, developed by New Zealandbased REX Bionics. The exoskeleton is made to be controlled with a joystick.
But Contreras-Vidal and his team have retrofitted a version to be used with
their brain-machine interface. The user of the exoskeleton wears an electrode
cap, with sensors on the scalp that read electrical activity in the brain. An
algorithm developed by Contreras-Vidal and his team interprets the brain
information and translates it into movement of the exoskeleton. In other words,
the wearer thinks move, left knee, and the algorithm turns it into action. This
can create relatively quick movements, as even in non-injured people it takes a
split second for information to travel from the brain to the body.
Any time we plan a movement, the information is there before were actually
seeing the movement, Contreras-Vidal says.
A number of researchers over the years have helped paralyzed people move
using electrodes implanted in their brains. Contreras-Vidals patent-pending
system is different because it is noninvasiveusers take the electrode cap on
and off at will. This is particularly useful in the case of patients who will only
need the exoskeleton temporarily, such as stroke victims who might use the
exoskeleton to regain walking ability, then learn to walk unaided. (A Brazilianled team developed a noninvasive brain-controlled exoskeleton to allow a
paraplegic to kick off the 2014 World Cup; the suit, however, didn't allow the
user to walk unaided). The thought-controlled exoskeleton is the result of years
of work on decoding the language of the brain. At the University of Houston,
Contreras-Vidal directs the Laboratory for Non-invasive Brain-Machine Interface
Systems, which employs a team of engineers, neuroscientists, doctors,
computer experts and even artists. Before Houston, he directed the Laboratory
of Neural Engineering and Smart Prosthetics at the University of Maryland,
where he worked on developing brain-controlled prosthetics for amputees. The
algorithms used to translate thoughts into movement are constantly being
improved, Contreras-Vidal says, in what he describes as a "creative process."
A device the size of a matchstick implanted in the brain may help a group of
paralyzed people walk using only their thoughts and a robotic exoskeleton.
In 2017, researchers will choose a select group of paralyzed people from
Australia to receive the implant, called a stentrode. If the trial succeeds, the
technology could become commercially available in as little as six years.

The stentrode, crafted from a space-age alloy called nitinol, could also benefit
people with Parkinsons disease, motor neuron disease, obsessive compulsive
disorder, and depression. It could even predict and manage seizures in
epileptic patients.
It will be inserted into the blood vessel with a catheter fed up through the groin
the same approach that has been used for years for cardiology and removing
stroke clots.
This technology is really exciting. Its the first time that weve been able to
demonstrate and develop a device that can be implanted without the need for
a big operation, to chronically record brain activity, says Terry OBrien from
the Royal Melbourne Hospital and the University of Melbournes Medicine,
Dentistry and Health Sciences Faculty.
The most obvious benefit is for people who are paralyzed following a stroke or
spinal cord injury. It is simple and non-invasive and much safer for patients.
No dangerous surgery required
The stentrode is inserted into a blood vessel that sits over the motor cortex.
The device is delivered through a small catheter, and when in position, the
catheter is removed, deploying the stentrode.
n 2003, Dr. Nicoleliss team proved that monkeys could use their thoughts
alone to control a robotic arm for reaching and grasping.

These experiments, Dr. Nicolelis said, are the first steps toward a brain
machine interface that might permit paralyzed people to walk by directing
devices with their thoughts. Electrodes in the persons brain would send signals
to a device worn on the hip, like a cell phone or pager, that would relay those
signals to a pair of braces, a kind of external skeleton, worn on the legs.
When that person thinks about walking, he said, walking happens.
Richard A. Andersen, an expert on such systems at the California Institute of
Technology in Pasadena who was not involved in the experiment, said that it
was an important advance to achieve locomotion with a brain machine
interface.
Another expert, Nicho Hatsopoulos, a professor at the University of Chicago,
said that the experiment was an exciting development. And the use of an
exoskeleton could be quite fruitful.
A brain machine interface is any system that allows people or animals to use
their brain activity to control an external device. But until ways are found to

safely implant electrodes into human brains, most research will remain focused
on animals.
Amputees can control their bionic prosthetic limbs with their minds, thanks to
tiny implanted myoelectric sensors (IMES) developed by Icelandic orthopedics
company Ossur and surgically placed in a patient's residual muscle tissue.
Ossur implanted tiny sensors in the residual muscle tissue of two amputees
that they say trigger movement in the prosthesis via a receiver. Ossur
President & CEO Jon Sigurdsson was due to announce in Copenhagen on
Wednesday (May 20) that the two amputees are the first world-wide to be able
to control their lower-limb prostheses subconsciously.
One of the patients trialing the new implants, Gummi Olafsson, lost his right
foot and lower leg years after a childhood traffic accident. He said the implants
allowed him to control his bionic leg and foot almost instantly.
"As soon as I put my foot on, it took me about 10 minutes to get control of it. I
could stand up and just walk away. Come back, sit down, use my muscles to
move my foot in the position I wanted to use it. It was, like you couldn't believe
the feeling when you were moving your ankle. It was really strange. I couldn't
explain it. It was like, I was moving it with my muscles, there was nobody else
doing it, the foot was not doing it, I was doing it, so it was really strange and
overwhelming," Olafsson remembered.
The signals sent from the brain to nerve-endings in muscles that prompt
movement continued even when Olafsson used a different prosthesis that did
not have the receiver. He said it was frustrating to be unable to control the foot
once more.

Вам также может понравиться