MIT Research Helps Convert Brain Signals into Action
From: MIT News - 10/02/2007
By: Elizabeth A. Thomson

MIT researchers have developed an algorithm to enhance prosthetic devices
that convert brain signals into actions. The MIT approach unifies several
different approaches used by experimental groups that created prototypes for
neural prosthetic devices in animals or humans. "The work represents an
important advance in our understanding of how to construct algorithms in
neural prosthetic devices for people who cannot move to act or speak," says
Lakshminarayan Srinivasan, lead author of a paper on the technique published
in the October issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology. Previous efforts to
create such devices have focused on boundaries related to brain regions,
recording modalities, and applications. The MIT researchers used graphical
models composed of circles and arrows that represent how neural activity
results from a person's intentions for the prosthetic device they are using.
The diagrams represent a mathematical relationship between the person's
intentions and the neural manifestation of that intention, and could come
from a variety of brain regions. Previously, researchers working on brain
prosthetics have used different algorithms depending on what method they were
using, but the new MIT model can be used no matter what measurement technique
is being used, Srinivasan says. Srinivasan emphasizes that neural prosthetic
algorithms still need significant improvement before such devices are
available for common use, and that the MIT algorithm is unifying but not
universal. 

Read the entire article at:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/prosthetics-1002.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071003130747.htm

Links:
Lakshminarayan Srinivasan
http://www.mit.edu/~ls2/

EE attempts to unify prosthetic design
http://eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202401022