[…] He was able to grasp, move and drop objects just by imagining himself performing the actions.
The device, known as a brain-computer interface (BCI), worked for a record 7 months without needing to be adjusted. Until now, such devices have only worked for a day or two.
The BCI relies on an AI model that can adjust to the small changes that take place in the brain as a person repeats a movement — or in this case, an imagined movement — and learns to do it in a more refined way.
[…]
The study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, appears March 6 in Cell.
The key was the discovery of how activity shifts in the brain day to day as a study participant repeatedly imagined making specific movements. Once the AI was programmed to account for those shifts, it worked for months at a time.
Location, location, location
Ganguly studied how patterns of brain activity in animals represent specific movements and saw that these representations changed day-to-day as the animal learned. He suspected the same thing was happening in humans, and that was why their BCIs so quickly lost the ability to recognize these patterns.
[…]
he participant’s brain could still produce the signals for a movement when he imagined himself doing it. The BCI recorded the brain’s representations of these movements through the sensors on his brain.
Ganguly’s team found that the shape of representations in the brain stayed the same, but their locations shifted slightly from day to day.
From virtual to reality
Ganguly then asked the participant to imagine himself making simple movements with his fingers, hands or thumbs over the course of two weeks, while the sensors recorded his brain activity to train the AI.
Then, the participant tried to control a robotic arm and hand. But the movements still weren’t very precise.
So, Ganguly had the participant practice on a virtual robot arm that gave him feedback on the accuracy of his visualizations. Eventually, he got the virtual arm to do what he wanted it to do.
Once the participant began practicing with the real robot arm, it only took a few practice sessions for him to transfer his skills to the real world.
He could make the robotic arm pick up blocks, turn them and move them to new locations. He was even able to open a cabinet, take out a cup and hold it up to a water dispenser.
[…]
Source: Paralyzed man moves robotic arm with his thoughts | ScienceDaily
Robin Edgar
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