Playing Piano with a Robotic Hand
From: Technology Review - 07/25/2007
By: Emily Singer

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University have demonstrated that it is possible
to control fingers on a robotic hand by directly tapping into the brain's
electronic signals using a neural interface. To create the neural interface,
researchers recorded brain-cell activity from monkeys as they moved their
fingers. Previous research showed that a particular part of the motor cortex
controls finger movement. The recorded brain activity was used to create
algorithms that decode the brain signals by identifying the specific activity
patterns associated with specific movements. When the algorithm was connected
to the robotic hand and given a new set of neural patterns, the robotic hand
performed the correct movement 95 percent of the time. These initial
experiments were performed "off-line," meaning the system was receiving
pre-recorded neural activity, but the researchers are planning a
demonstration with a live neural feed within the next six months. Monkeys
implanted with an array of recording electrodes will be connected to a
virtual version of the prosthetic arm and monitored to see how well they can
use brain activity to control the virtual hand. The preliminary results are
encouraging, but the scientists know it will be a long time before the system
has the dexterity of a real hand and that a practical human version of the
neural interface is still a long way off. "We would hope that eventually,
we'll be able to implant similar arrays permanently in the motor cortex of
human subjects," says University of Rochester neurologist and project
researcher Mark Schieber. Schieber says the long-term objective is to get the
robotic hand to move however the user wants it to in real time, but getting
the decoding algorithm to understand unscripted and general movements will be
the challenge. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19096/

Links:

Marc Schieber's Lab
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd/Nanat/faculty-research/lab-pages/MarcSchieber/

A Hand for the Wounded
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/duncan/17654/

Brain Chips Give Paralyzed Patients New Powers
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/17163/