Can Advances in Brain-Computer Interfaces Help Restore Movement in Nerve Damage Cases?

AUSTIN, Texas - Oct. 13, 2022 - PRLog -- In this Formaspace laboratory report, we take a look at promising laboratory research using Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) to help patients recover motor control over their limbs, restore their sense of touch, or gain partial ability to see objects in the physical environment.

Intracortical Visual Prosthesis (ICVP) At Illinois Institute Of Technology (IIT)

Principal Investigator Dr. Philip R. Troyk is leading the efforts to create a neural bypass prosthetic for patients suffering from total blindness, e.g., no light perception capability.

This work is taking place at the Pritzker Institute of Biomedical Science and Engineering located within the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) – in partnership with the Chicago Lighthouse, a service organization for the blind, headed by Dr. Janet Szlyk. Funding was provided in part by the NIH's BRAIN Initiative as well as the DoD and private donors.

Their approach is to bypass the retina and optic nerves entirely. Instead, a custom chip module fitted with electrode stimulators is implanted directly into the brain's visual cortex, which connects wirelessly to an external camera. These custom modules are manufactured by Sigenics, where Dr. Troyk serves as CEO.

The first patient received the Intracortical Visual Prosthesis System (as it is formally known) in February 2022. The module implanted in the brain has 25 nerve stimulators and a total of 400 electrodes, providing a low-resolution, black-and-white representation of the physical environment. If this proof-of-concept clinical trial is successful, future generations of the technology could be enhanced to incorporate higher resolution and color inputs.

Robotic Arm With Bi-Directional Sensory Feedback At The Rehab Neural Engineering Labs, University Of Pittsburgh

Researchers at the Rehab Neural Engineering Labs, University of Pittsburgh, are investigating ways to help patients living with tetraplegia due to spinal cord injuries (in layman's terms, quadriplegics) by creating brain-computer interfaces that not only control prosthetic arms via the brain but also provide the user with artificially-generated tactical feedback when touching or grasping objects.

In the field of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) design, developing systems that control motor functions (such as causing individual muscle groups to contract or relax) is hard enough, but it's far more challenging – and valuable to patients – to implement a bi-directional sensory feedback loop that allows the brain to respond and interact with artificial sensory inputs that mimic the sense of touch.

Read more...https://formaspace.com/articles/wet-lab/brain-computer-in...