Learning to use an implanted brain electrode to control a prosthetic or robotic arm might be easier than researchers thought, suggests a linkurl:study;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.1000153 published online yesterday (21 July) in PLoS Biology. Ideally, the goal of a brain-machine interface is "to control the prosthetic naturally," said lead author linkurl:Jose Carmena;http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~carmena/ from the University of California, Berkeley. To date, though, controlling devices via an electrode implanted in the brain has taken considerable practice, often with inconsistent results.
Brain-implanted neuroprosthetics use a computer algorithm to interpret the brain's impulses. But the standard practice with these implants is to reset the algorithm every day -- sometimes twice a day -- to adjust for neurons that move away from the electrodes. "It's one feature of the neuron that makes...
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between the center dot and radial dots were proficient by day 13 Image: Jose Carmena, Karunesh Ganguly and PLoS Biology |
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