EUREKALERT, DUKE CENTER FOR NEUROENGINEERINGParalyzed patients have used brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) to control one robotic limb at a time, but figuring out how to control two arms at once is challenging. Researchers from Duke University have now shown that rhesus monkeys are capable of performing reaching movements with two arms of an avatar simultaneously using a BMI. Their findings were published in Science Translational Medicine last week (November 6).
“No device will ever work for people unless it restores bimanual behaviors,” senior author Miguel Nicolelis, a professor of neurobiology and biomedical engineering at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, told Science NOW. “You need to use both arms and hands for the simplest tasks.”
Nicolelis and his colleagues implanted hundreds of tiny electrodes in the brains of two rhesus monkeys, which allowed the animals to control reaching movements of an onscreen avatar. They trained the monkeys to watch the avatar from the first-person point of view. When the avatar reached for two circular targets—one for each avatar arm—simultaneously, the monkeys were rewarded with a sip of juice. One monkey learned to manipulate the avatar’s arms first by controlling joysticks, then with its mind while ...
