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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

A team of neuroscientists at Duke Health have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) that allows monkeys to steer a robotic wheelchair by thought alone [kurzweilai.net]:

The BMI uses signals from hundreds of neurons recorded simultaneously in two regions of the monkeys' brains that are involved in movement and sensation. As the animals think about moving toward their goal — in this case, a bowl containing fresh grapes — computers translate their brain activity into real-time operation of the wheelchair.

The interface, described in the March 3 issue of the open-access online journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates the future potential for people with disabilities who have lost most muscle control and mobility due to quadriplegia or ALS, said senior author Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., Ph.D., co-director for the Duke Center for Neuroengineering. "In some severely disabled people, even blinking is not possible," Nicolelis said. "For them, using a wheelchair or device controlled by noninvasive measures like an EEG (a device that monitors brain waves through electrodes on the scalp) may not be sufficient. We show clearly that if you have intracranial implants, you get better control of a wheelchair than with noninvasive devices."

Scientists began the experiments in 2012, implanting hundreds of hair-thin microfilaments in the premotor and somatosensory regions of the brains of two rhesus macaques. They trained the animals by passively navigating the chair toward the bowl containing grapes. During this training phase, the scientists recorded the primates' large-scale electrical brain activity. The researchers then programmed a computer system to translate these recorder brain signals into digital motor commands that later controlled the movements of the wheelchair. This process is similar to using recorded brain patterns of experienced pilots to train novice pilots (see "Now you can learn to fly a plane from expert-pilot brainwave patterns [kurzweilai.net]"), except that in this case, the monkey's own brain activity was recorded. As the monkeys learned to control the wheelchair just by thinking, they became more efficient at navigating toward the grapes and completed the trials faster, Nicolelis said.

The primates' brain signals showed signs they were estimating their distance to the bowl of grapes. "This was not a signal that was present in the beginning of the training, but something that emerged as an effect of the monkeys becoming proficient in this task," Nicolelis said. "This was a surprise. It demonstrates the brain's enormous flexibility to assimilate a device, in this case a wheelchair, and that device's spatial relationships to the surrounding world."

Wireless Cortical Brain-Machine Interface for Whole-Body Navigation in Primates [nature.com] (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep22170)

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