Recent Advances in Brain-Computer Interface Systems - Free Open Access Book. Edited by Reza Fazel-Rezai, ISBN 978-953-307-175-6, 222 pages, Publisher: InTech, Chapters published February 04, 2011 under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licenseDOI: 10.5772/579 Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology provides a direct electronic interface and can convey messages and commands directly from the human brain to a computer. BCI technology involves monitoring conscious brain electrical activity via electroencephalogram (EEG) signals and detecting characteristics of EEG patterns via digital signal processing algorithms that the user generates to communicate. It has the potential to enable the physically disabled to perform many activities, thus improving their quality of life and productivity, allowing them more independence and reducing social costs.
The challenge with BCI, however, is to extract the relevant patterns from the EEG signals produced by the brain each second. Optical interface to link robotic limbs, human brain (SMU Research) DOD, industry fund $5.6 million SMU-led research center; Lyle School technology drives development of advanced prosthetics Lightning-fast connections between robotic limbs and the human brain may be within reach for injured soldiers and other amputees with the establishment of a multimillion-dollar research center led by SMU engineers.
Funded by a Department of Defense initiative dedicated to audacious challenges and intense time schedules, the Neurophotonics Research Center will develop two-way fiber optic communication between prosthetic limbs and peripheral nerves. This connection will be key to operating realistic robotic arms, legs and hands that not only move like the real thing, but also “feel” sensations like pressure and heat. Successful completion of the fiber optic link will allow for sending signals seamlessly back and forth between the brain and artificial limbs, allowing amputees revolutionary freedom of movement and agility. Potential to patch injured spinal cord.
Controlling Individual Cortical Nerve Cells by Human Thought. PASADENA, Calif. —Five years ago, neuroscientist Christof Koch of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried of UCLA, and their colleagues discovered that a single neuron in the human brain can function much like a sophisticated computer and recognize people, landmarks, and objects, suggesting that a consistent and explicit code may help transform complex visual representations into long-term and more abstract memories. Now Koch and Fried, along with former Caltech graduate student and current postdoctoral fellow Moran Cerf, have found that individuals can exert conscious control over the firing of these single neurons—despite the neurons' location in an area of the brain previously thought inaccessible to conscious control—and, in doing so, manipulate the behavior of an image on a computer screen.
The study was conducted on 12 epilepsy patients at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where Fried directs the Epilepsy Surgery Program. Cyrus? - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a film worth... Berkeley Bionics reveals eLEGS exoskeleton, aims to help paraplegics walk in 2011 (update: eyes-on)
Driver with bionic arm fights for life after car crash | World news. Christian Kandlbauer at the controls of a custom-made car in Berlin last year, which he drove with the help of a mind-controlled artificial left arm and a muscle-controlled false right arm. Photograph: Jens Kalaene/EPA A man who became the first person in the world allowed to drive using a mind-controlled bionic arm is in a critical condition after the car he was driving crashed into a tree in Austria. Christian Kandlbauer, 22, lost his arms after an electric shock sustained while climbing a 20,000-volt power line in 2005. Austrian and American scientists teamed up to create a prosthesis he could operate using his mind and which was also capable of feeling. After intensive training, he eventually passed his driving test. Tonight Kandlbauer is in hospital with serious head injuries after driving his specially modified car into a tree in his native Styria, south-east Austria. A spokesperson for LKH hospital in Graz said Kandlbauer was in intensive care fighting for his life.
Breakthrough: Scientists harness the power of electricity in the brain (w/ Video) (PhysOrg.com) -- A paralyzed patient may someday be able to "think" a foot into flexing or a leg into moving, using technology that harnesses the power of electricity in the brain, and scientists at University of Michigan School of Kinesiology are now one big step closer. Researchers at the school and colleagues from the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego have developed technology that for the first time allows doctors and scientists to noninvasively isolate and measure electrical brain activity in moving people. This technology is a key component of the kind of brain-computer interfaces that would allow a robotic exoskeleton controlled by a patient's thoughts to move that patient's limb, said Daniel Ferris, associate professor in the School of Kinesiology and author of a trio of papers detailing the research.
Also, electrodes have gotten more sensitive and have a better signal to noise ratio, he said. Synthetic Neurobiology Group: Ed Boyden, Principal Investigator. Goal: Giving feeling to a damaged hand or prosthetic limb | Johns Hopkins University - The Gazette. September 7, 2010Print version Neuroscientist Steven Hsiao of the Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute is leading a team working to decode how the brain processes sensations in hands. Photo: Will Kirk/Homewoodphoto.jhu.edu This is part of an occasional series on Johns Hopkins research funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
If you have a study you would like to be considered for inclusion, contact Lisa De Nike at lde@jhu.edu. Back in 1980 when The Empire Strikes Back hit the big screen, it seemed like the most fantastic of science fiction scenarios: Luke Skywalker getting a fully functional bionic arm to replace the one he had lost to arch enemy Darth Vader. Thirty years later, such a device is more the stuff of fact and less of fiction, as increasingly sophisticated artificial limbs are being developed that allow users a startlingly lifelike range of motion and fine motor control. Related websites Steven Hsiao: krieger.jhu.edu/mbi/research/hsiao Steven Hsiao’s lab: Swiss researchers show off brain-controlled, AI-augmented wheelchair.