Algorithms Aid Prosthetics Development
From: The Engineer (United Kingdom) - 06/21/2010
By: Siobhan Wagner

Advanced algorithms could help make the speed and accuracy of clinically
viable prosthetic devices more comparable to a healthy human arm. Engineers
from Cambridge University have teamed up with neuroscientists at Stanford
University to develop intelligent algorithms for decoding neural activity
into physical commands. Cambridge professor Zoubin Ghahramani describes
neurons as noisy information channels, but notes that neural prosthetic
designers are using fairly simple linear methods for decoding activities. "So
you get activity from many, many neurons spiking and it is a challenge to
infer the desired action and direction of movement," he says. The researchers
will bring more advanced machine-learning methods with adaptability to
changing electrode recordings. They plan to test the algorithm in neural
prosthetic devices implanted in primates before human trials. "The field of
neural implants is moving quite rapidly but the idea of having brain signals
control previously paralyzed bodies will take a bit longer," Ghahramani says. 

Read the entire article at:
http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/algorithms-aid-prosthetics-development/1003069.article

Link:
Zoubin Ghahramani
http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/zoubin/