Hardware connects brain to computer and thought to function 
Giving hope to quadriplegics
From: Abilities Expo Buzz - 04/2007

In the April 3 issue of The Columbus Dispatch featured a story about a stroke
patient who cannot move or talk. Yet she directs a wheelchair to go forward,
backward and to turn around. How? Simply by thinking it.  

"It's hard to find the right words. It was very emotional," said Chad Bouton,
a Battelle engineer who watched the quadriplegic woman use the technology he
helped refine. "And she was so pleased." 

Bouton was at Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems Inc. in Foxborough,
Mass., to see his work come to life. Although it could be two years before
patients regularly use the BrainGate technology (the federal government first
must approve it), scientists are hopeful.  

Brown University neuroscientist John Donoghue worked out the basic technology
several years ago and founded Cyberkinetics to pursue his vision that someday
quadriplegics might feed and care for themselves. Donoghue bypassed the
dizzying complexity of the nervous system by trying to connect the billions
of neuron cells in the brain to a computer. He created a computer chip
one-sixteenth of an inch wide and studded it with 96 electrodes that he
attaches to an area in the brain, called the motor cortex, just above the
ear. The chip picks up an incredible amount of electrical activity that
crisscrosses the brain and controls everything from visual recognition and
thought to vocalization and motor skills.  

A razor-thin wire connected to the chip runs from the brain through a port in
the skull to a computer. "The cells are like broadcast towers," Donoghue
said. And the chips are like radio stations that pick up the signals. The
brain is a very noisy place, and Cyberkinetics needed help deciphering all
the activity the electrodes picked up. The company went to Battelle.  

Bouton's solution is software that uses a complex series of equations, called
algorithms, that filters the brain's electrical activity. In effect, the
computer identifies specific commands, such as moving a wheelchair, from
everything else.  

"We're collecting all of the signals from her brain when she's thinking
'forward.' We're picking up the neurons that are firing," Bouton said. After
about 15 minutes of practice, the patient in the Cyberkinetics test was able
to easily move the wheelchair with her thoughts. She also was able to control
a computer cursor by thinking "up," "down," "right," and "left," and spelled
words such as "wonderful." 

"She exceeded our expectations and possibly her own," Bouton said. He
acknowledges the science-fictionlike aspects of the research and the
potential for its uses beyond quadriplegia. "This is a step toward the
man-and-machine gap being closed," Bouton said.  

How it works, however, remains a bit of a mystery. The electrodes on the chip
don't physically connect with individual neurons. There are far too many,
even in a tiny area of the brain. A skeletal muscle, for example, is made up
of thousands of individual muscle fibers, each controlled by one motor neuron
in either the brain or the spinal cord.  

BrainGate might someday allow an amputee to move a prosthetic arm or leg.
Scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland say they think
they can use the technology to help people with injured spinal cords move
their paralyzed limbs. There's nothing wrong with their nervous systems and
muscles. There is a simple disconnect between the nerves in their spinal
cords and their brains.  

"We have the capacity to electrically stimulate these muscles in the right
way to create a movement," said Robert Kirsch, a biomedical researcher at
Case Western. "But the person needs some way of telling his arm what he wants
it to do." 

With a five-year, $4.3 million grant from the National Center for Medical
Rehabilitation Research, Kirsch wants to use BrainGate within five to 10
years to help spinal-cord patients lift a glass of water. The idea is to
bypass the damage in the spinal cord by connecting the brain directly to the
muscle.  

Kirsch and Hunter Peckham, who directs the Case Western program, first tried
to work around this problem by wiring the muscles in a person's neck to a
computer and then to a muscle in the arm. In effect, they transformed the
neck into a joystick. By moving the neck, a patient is telling the computer
to stimulate the arm, say to raise or lower it. About 300 people have been
outfitted with the equipment.  

"It's very crude and tedious," Kirsch said. "It's not very natural. We really
want to give people the ability to control whatever movement they want." 
Crude, maybe so, but the technology has given 50-year-old Cleveland resident
Emma Freeman hope. Freeman was injured by a gunshot in 1994 and lost the use
of her right side. Using the wiring, she has been able to regain some
movement in her right arm.  

Links:
Brain implants enable movement
http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/contentbe/dispatch/2006/07/13/20060713-A7-00.html

Mind Control
http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/content/science/stories/2007/04/03/sci_thoughts.ART_ART_04-03-07_D6_PJ67B9H.html

Cuberkinetics
http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/index.jsp

BrainGate
http://www.cyberkineticsinc.com/content/medicalproducts/braingate.jsp

John Donoghue
http://donoghue.neuro.brown.edu/

Robert Kirsch
http://fescenter.case.edu/Start_Here/Researchers/principal_inv_kirsch.htm

Hunter Peckham
http://bme.case.edu/faculty_staff/peckham/