By Roland Piquepaille
You probably remember the story which surfaced in May 2005 about monkeys using robotic arms as their own (check here or there to refresh your memory). Now, according to the ANBA press agency, Miguel Nicolelis, the professor of neurology at Duke University who was behind the experiments with the monkeys, wants to go further. He plans to install chips in humans' brains in order to control prosthetic arms. Of course, there is still some work to do with animals before this kind of surgery can be practiced on humans. But the first surgery in the world to implant a neuro-prosthesis inside a human being is expected to be performed in a Brazilian hospital by 2008.Here is the introduction of the ANBA report.
The Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, in the southeastern Brazilian city of São Paulo, is going to perform the first surgery in the world for implantation of robotic arms into a human being, to be moved by brain signals. The agreement for realization of the surgery was singed last month with the Santos Dumont Association for Support to Research. The surgery is scheduled to take place in three years.
According to the hospital's corporate superintendent, Mauricio Ceschin, the technique consists on implanting a microchip into the human brain to translate the nerve pulses into electric pulses, making it possible for the patient to move robotic prosthetics.
Below is a diagram describing how a patient's brain can control the prosthetics (Credit: Miguel Nicolelis's Laboratory at Duke's Center for Neuroengineering).
Of course, this will take time before this technique can be applied to a human.
According to Ceschin, up to the execution of the first surgery for implantation of robotic arms moved by brain signals, the Education and Teaching Institute of the Syrian-Lebanese hospital will have a laboratory turned to research in neuroscience, where new tests will take place before the first surgery.
The superintendent also stated that a team of hospital neurosurgeons is getting ready to apply the new technique. "It will still take between two and three years for tests to be concluded on animals. The doctors must feel secure," he said.
For slightly more information, you also can read a former news release from the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital.
As you can guess, there is no scientific paper available on this subject. But if you want to read the latest research paper about this brain-machine interface, at least for monkeys, The Journal of Neuroscience has published "Cortical Ensemble Adaptation to Represent Velocity of an Artificial Actuator Controlled by a Brain-Machine Interface" (May 11, 2005, Vol. 25, Num. 19, Pages 4681-4693). Here is a link to the abstract.
Monkeys can learn to directly control the movements of an artificial actuator by using a brain-machine interface (BMI) driven by the activity of a sample of cortical neurons. Eventually, they can do so without moving their limbs. Neuronal adaptations underlying the transition from control of the limb to control of the actuator are poorly understood. Here, we show that rapid modifications in neuronal representation of velocity of the hand and actuator occur in multiple cortical areas during the operation of a BMI. Initially, monkeys controlled the actuator by moving a hand-held pole.
As the monkeys started using their cortical activity to control the actuator, the activity of individual neurons and neuronal populations became less representative of the animal's hand movements while representing the movements of the actuator. As a result of this adaptation, the animals could eventually stop moving their hands yet continue to control the actuator. These results show that, during BMI control, cortical ensembles represent behaviorally significant motor parameters, even if these are not associated with movements of the animal's own limb.
Sources: Marina Sarruf, ANBA (Brazil Arab News Agency), translated by Mark Ament, July 8, 2005; and various web sites
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