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posted by azrael on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the salt-and-vinegar dept.

With a chip implanted in his brain, a 23-year-old quadriplegic moves his fingers and hand.

Thanks to a computer chip, algorithms, and nearly 10 years of research, a 23-year-old quadriplegic moved his fingers and hand with the power of his own thoughts.

"I never dreamed I would ever be able to do that again," said Ian Burkhart, of Dublin, Ohio. Burkhart, who was injured in a 2010 diving accident, is the first patient to use Neurobridge, an electronic neural bypass system developed at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

The system, which is aimed at spinal cord injuries, is designed to reconnect the brain directly to muscles, allowing voluntary and functional control of a paralyzed limb.

The technology may one day give self-propelled movement back to patients affected by brain and spinal cord injuries.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:47AM

    by Tork (3914) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @04:47AM (#65707)
    I don't have anything to add, I just think that's f'n awesome. That dude must be having the best day of his life.
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  • (Score: 2) by jasassin on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:47AM

    by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 08 2014, @05:47AM (#65727) Homepage Journal

    When I was a teen, the foundation series of books made me wqant to become a roboticist. Now this is different, but stoking those old embers into a new fire. Instead of making a robot to feed the man I might be able to fix the man so he can feed himself. This is very very cool!

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:04AM (#65736)

    If you only see the potential for good, you're half blind.

    • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday July 08 2014, @10:06AM

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @10:06AM (#65812) Homepage

      Yes, won't someone think of all the quadriplegic criminals who could be back on the streets by Monday?

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk
  • (Score: 2) by RobotMonster on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:32AM

    by RobotMonster (130) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:32AM (#65742) Journal

    I'm waiting for the day we can get a bluetooth version of this tech, so that I can type at blinding speed without moving my fingers.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by pkrasimirov on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:43AM

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 08 2014, @06:43AM (#65749)

    Quadriparesis [wikipedia.org] would be more correct term because Ian has only motor loss, no loss of sensation. You can see at the end of video [youtube.com] that a man grabs his hand to congratulate him.

    Also "The university reported that Burkhart's thoughts are translated into movement within a tenth of a second." It's 100 ms only for the decoding, that is 10 fps. I hope they can improve this lag.

    • (Score: 1) by SparkyGSX on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:04AM

      by SparkyGSX (4041) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:04AM (#65778)

      A 100ms lag isn't great, but as long as you can see what you're doing, it's probably not going to be much of a problem in real life. Someone who was completely paralyzed probably won't mind the fact that they can't play reaction games or do other things that require high-speed movements, just being able to do simple things like pouring a drink and drinking it without any help is a huge improvement.

      I think a little lag on the actuator isn't quite a bad as lag on the sensors (eyes), as an experiment with an Oculus Rift recently showed. The brain is probably better at compensating for the delay of the actuator, when the feedback into the brain is free of delays, compared to the other way around.

      The article and video only show a one-way interface; it's probably even harder to relay information in the other direction, to make the user feel pressure, temperature, etc., which we normally use as feedback when gripping things. If he can just move his hands, he wouldn't know how tightly he is gripping something.

      Of course, this can be at least partially resolved by using specially designed objects, like a cup with a large rim or finger-sized indentations, so that the shape prevents the cup from slipping out of his fingers, instead of just the friction generated by the gripping force. In the same way, other objects could be designed that can be more easily held without the sensory feedback from the hands.

      --
      If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
    • (Score: 1) by SparkyGSX on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:23AM

      by SparkyGSX (4041) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:23AM (#65784)

      Wait, what? I didn't get this the first time I read your reply.

      The man shaking his hand doesn't imply his sensory nerves still work. I don't know a whole lot about this, but is it possible he can still feel everything, but can't control his muscles? The article and video seemed to imply he has a spinal cord injury.

      --
      If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by SparkyGSX on Tuesday July 08 2014, @07:04AM

    by SparkyGSX (4041) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @07:04AM (#65754)

    The journalist is a complete idiot, aside from the fact that there isn't anything about the actual interface to the brain (a "microchip" is not an interface), the article apparently wasn't long enough, so he decided to include some completely irrelevant bullshit about a hypothetical military exoskeleton and an outdated quote from a totally unrelated researcher who said "in 10 to 15 years" six years ago, which the journalist translated into "either in 2017 or in 2022".

    I wonder how they actually did interface the brain; did they use electrodes to make a direct electrical connection, which has been done before with insects and small animals, but from what I've read usually causes various problems after a few weeks or so, or did they use something like a capacitive coupling, which doesn't require direct metal (or other conductor) contact to the organic material? Does he really have a huge connector in his head, or is that some kind of magnetic pickup, with inductive data and power coupling to the device in his head?

    --
    If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 08 2014, @01:38PM

      by VLM (445) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @01:38PM (#65889)

      "I wonder how they actually did interface the brain"

      You're talking about pinouts and EE stuff. Thats interesting. The API is also interesting. Is it flexible enough to support, with some training, perhaps 4 arms instead of the stock 2? Expansions would be a cool area to research. Especially for .mil. Don't give them virtual legs or something dumb like that, give them a new limb called "tank" that only exists as a conceptual object.

      I imagine training new senses and limbs that never existed before would be complicated, but cool.

    • (Score: 1) by Hawkwind on Tuesday July 08 2014, @07:12PM

      by Hawkwind (3531) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @07:12PM (#66129)
      The interface is something called Neurobridge [battelle.org]. It uses a chip on the brain's motor cortex. The Medical Center's article is here. [osu.edu]
      • (Score: 2) by ragequit on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:01PM

        by ragequit (44) on Tuesday July 08 2014, @08:01PM (#66154) Journal

        The connector going into the dude's nugget is GINORMOUS!!

        I hope they can scale that down eventually. Maybe put some cool stickers on it or something. A little less Borg-ish...

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