Ingenious Brain-Computer Interface Restored Injured Man’s Sense Of Touch

Researchers Restore Injured Man’s Sense of Touch Using Ingenious Brain-Computer Interface

While we may frequently underestimate our feeling of touch, restoring the feeling of touch implies a lot to the specialists who are creating advances to reestablish appendage work for deadened individuals.

However, a team of researchers at Battelle and the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center recently reported that they have been able to restore sensation to the hand of a research participant with a severe spinal cord injury using a brain-computer interface (BCI) system.

According to a study published this week in the journal Cell, the researchers describe how their technology harnesses neural signals so minuscule, they can’t be perceived, and then enhances the signals via artificial sensory feedback sent back to the participant, resulting in greatly enriched motor function.

“We’re taking sub-perceptual touch events and boosting them into conscious perception,” says first author Patrick Ganzer, a principal research scientist at Battelle. “When we did this, we saw several functional improvements. It was a big eureka moment when we first restored the participant’s sense of touch.”

The participant in this investigation is Ian Burkhart, a 28-year-elderly person who endured a spinal cord injury during a diving accident in 2010. Since 2014, Burkhart has been working with examiners on a venture called NeuroLife that means to reestablish capacity to his right arm.

The device they have developed works through a system of electrodes on his skin and a small computer chip implanted in his motor cortex. This setup, which uses wires to route movement signals from the brain to the muscles, bypassing his spinal cord injury, gives Burkhart enough control over his arm and hand to lift a coffee mug, swipe a credit card, and play Guitar Hero.

“Until now, at times Ian has felt like his hand was foreign due to lack of sensory feedback,” Ganzer says. “He also has trouble with controlling his hand unless he is watching his movements closely. This requires a lot of concentration and makes simple multitasking like drinking a soda while watching TV almost impossible.”

The investigators found that although Burkhart had almost no sensation in his hand, when they stimulated his skin, a neural signal—so small it was his brain was unable to perceive it—was still getting to his brain. Ganzer explains that even in people like Burkhart who have what is considered a “clinically complete” spinal cord injury, there are almost always a few wisps of nerve fiber that remain intact. The Cell paper explains how they were able to boost these signals to the level where the brain would respond.

The sub-perceptual touch signals were artificially sent back to Burkhart using haptic feedback. Common examples of haptic feedback are the vibration from a mobile phone or game controller that lets the user feel that something is working. The new system allows the sub-perceptual touch signals coming from Burkhart’s skin to travel back to his brain through artificial haptic feedback that he can perceive.

The advances in the BCI system led to three important improvements. They enable Burkhart to reliably detect something by touch alone: in the future, this may be used to find and pick up an object without being able to see it.

The framework likewise is the first BCI that takes into account reclamation of development and contact without a moment’s delay, and this capacity to encounter upgraded contact during development gives him a more prominent feeling of control and lets him to do things all the more rapidly. At long last, these enhancements permit the BCI framework to detect how much strain to utilize when taking care of an article or getting something—for instance, utilizing a light touch when getting a delicate item like a Styrofoam cup however a firmer grasp when getting something substantial.

The investigators’ long-term goal is to develop a BCI system that works as well in the home as it does in the laboratory. They are working on creating a next-generation sleeve containing the required electrodes and sensors that could be easily put on and taken off. They also aim to develop a system that can be controlled with a tablet rather than a computer, making it smaller and more portable.

“It has been amazing to see the possibilities of sensory information coming from a device that was originally created to only allow me to control my hand in a one-way direction,” Burkhart says.

Reprinted from Cell

Credits: goodnewsnetwork

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