October 20, 2004
Birth of a Cyborg
For a signals processing guy, the signals on our neurons are just another electrical signal to decode, something of interest. Researchers have taken this a step farther in order to help a quardrapalegic man in the UK. I have seen some preliminary work in this area done at Stanford with rats, but this is much more advanced than anything that I had heard of.
Posted by elkaim at October 20, 2004 3:16 PMRival teams are building devices to read brain activity without touching neurons. Neural Signals, based in Atlanta, has patented a conductive skull screw that sits outside the brain, just under the skull. Other researchers are developing non-invasive technologies, for example using an electroencephalogram to read a patient's thoughts.
But BrainGate's creators argue that such techniques only give a general picture of brain activity, and that the more direct approach allows more numerous and more specific signals to be translated. "This array has 100 electrodes, so one can theoretically tap into 100 neurons," says Jon Mukand, an investigator on the team based at the Sargent Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island.
This makes the technology faster and more flexible, he argues. "It's far more versatile when one can get a larger number of neurons."
But Stephen Roberts, an engineer at Oxford University, UK, who has worked on brain-computer interfaces, says the field is still waiting for a breakthrough. "We have to make something that works robustly and without a lot of patient training," he says. "Most of these devices work well on a small subset of patients, but there's a long way to go before getting them to work for the general population."