'BrainGate' Brain-Machine-Interface takes shape
from Health and Wellbeing (373 articles)
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Image Gallery ( 7 images )Cyberkinetics has a vision, CEO Tim Surgenor explained to Gizmag, but it is not promising "miracle cures", or that quadriplegic people will be able to walk again - yet. Their primary goal is to help restore many activities of daily living that are impossible for paralysed people and to provide a platform for the development of a wide range of other assistive devices.
"Today quadriplegic people are satisfied if they get a rudimentary connection to the outside world. What we're trying to give them is a connection that is as good and fast as using their hands. We're going to teach them to think about moving the cursor using the part of the brain that usually controls the arms to push keys and create, if you will, a mental device that can input information into a computer. That is the first application, a kind of prosthetic, if you will. Then it is possible to use the computer to control a robot arm or their own arm, but that would be down the road."
Existing technology stimulates muscle groups that can make an arm move. The problem Surgenor and his team faced was in creating an input or control signal. With the right control signal they found they could stimulate the right muscle groups to make arm movement.
"Another application would be for somebody to handle a tricycle or exercise machine to help patients who have a lot of trouble with their skeletal muscles. But walking, I have to say, would be very complex. There's a lot of issues with balance and that's not going to be an easy thing to do, but it is a goal."
Cyberkinetics hopes to refine the BrainGate in the next two years to develop a wireless device that is completely implantable and doesn't have a plug, making it safer and less visible. And once the basics of brain mapping are worked out there is potential for a wide variety of further applications, Surgenor explains.
"If you could detect or predict the onset of epilepsy, that would be a huge therapeutic application for people who have seizures, which leads to the idea of a 'pacemaker for the brain'. So eventually people may have this technology in their brains and if something starts to go wrong it will take a therapeutic action. That could be available by 2007 to 2008."
Surgenor also sees a time not too far off where normal humans are interfacing with BrainGate technology to enhance their relationship with the digital world - if they're willing to be implanted.
"If we can figure out how to make this device cheaper, there might be applications for people to control machines, write software or perform intensive actions. But that's a good distance away. Right now the only way to get that level of detail from these signals is to actually have surgery to place this on the surface of the brain. It's not possible to do this with a non-invasive approach. For example, you can have an EEG and if you concentrate really hard you can think about and move a cursor on a screen, but if someone makes a loud noise or you get interrupted, you lose that ability. What we're trying to make here is a direct connection. The [BrainGate] is going to be right there and you won't have to think about it."
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