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The mind-to-movement system that allows a quadriplegic man to control a computer using only his thoughts is a

scientific milestone. It was reached, in large part, through the brain gate system. This system has become a boon to

the paralyzed. The Brain Gate System is based on Cyber kinetics platform technology to sense, transmit ,analyze

and apply the language of neurons. The principle of operation behind the Brain Gate System is that with intact brain

function, brain signals are generated even though they are not sent to the arms, hands and legs.The signals are

interpreted and translated into cursor movements, offering the user an alternate Brain Gate pathway to control a

computer with thought,just as individuals who have the ability to move their hands use a mouse.

The 'Brain Gate' contains tiny spikes that will extend down about one millimeter into the brain after being implanted

beneath the skull,monitoring the activity from a small group of neurons.It will now be possible for a patient with spinal

cord injury to produce brain signals that relay the intention of moving the paralyzed limbs,as signals to an implanted

sensor,which is then output as electronic impulses. These impulses enable the user to operate mechanical devices

with the help of a computer cursor. Matthew Nagle,a 25-year-old Massachusetts man with a severe spinal cord

injury,has been paralyzed from the neck down since 2001.After taking part in a clinical trial of this system,he has

opened e-mail,switched TV channels,turned on lights.He even moved a robotic hand from his wheelchair. This marks

the first time that neural movement signals have been recorded and decoded in a human with spinal cord injury.The

system is also the first to allow a human to control his surrounding environment us ing his mind.

2004 An implantable, brain-computer interface the size of an aspirin has been clinically tested on

humans by American company Cyberkinetics. The 'BrainGate' device can provide paralysed or

motor-impaired patients a mode of communication through the translation of thought into direct

computer control. The technology driving this breakthrough in the Brain-Machine-Interface field has

a myriad of potential applications, including the development of human augmentation for military and

commercial purposes.

 

 

 

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"The goal of the BrainGate program is to develop a fast, reliable and unobtrusive connection

between the brain of a severely disabled person and a personal computer" stated Tim Surgenor,

President and CEO of Cyberkinetics. "We [hope] to provide paralysed individuals with a gateway

through which they can access the broad capabilities of computers, control devices in the

surrounding environment, and even move their own limbs."

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have already demonstrated that a monkey can feed itself

with a robotic arm simply by using signals from its brain, an advance that could enhance prosthetics

for people, especially those with spinal cord injuries. Now, using the BrainGate system in the current

human trials, a 25 year old quadriplegic has successfully been able to switch on lights, adjust the

volume on a TV, change channels and read e-mail using only his brain. Crucially, the patient was

able to do these tasks while carrying on a conversation and moving his head at the same time.

John Donoghue, the chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University, led the original

research project and went on to co-found Cyberkinetics, where he is currently chief scientific officer

overseeing the clinical trial. "The development of the BrainGate program is the culmination of 10

years of research in my academic laboratory at Brown University. We have not only demonstrated in

preclinical studies that BrainGate can remain safely implanted in the [monkey] brain for at least two

years, but we have shown that it can safely be removed as well."

About the BrainGate device 

The BrainGate Neural Interface Device is a proprietary brain-computer interface that consists of an

internal neural signal sensor and external processors that convert neural signals into an output

signal under the users own control. The sensor consists of a tiny chip smaller than a baby aspirin,

with one hundred electrode sensors each thinner than a hair that detect brain cell electrical activity.

The BrainGate technology platform was designed to take advantage of the fact that many patients

with motor impairment have an intact brain that can produce movement commands. This may allow

the BrainGate system to create an output signal directly from the brain, bypassing the route through

the nerves to the muscles that cannot be used in paralysed people.

The chip is implanted on the surface of the brain in the motor cortex area that controls movement. In

the pilot version of the device, a cable connects the sensor to an external signal processor in a cart

that contains computers. The computers translate brain activity and create the communication output

using custom decoding software. Importantly, the entire BrainGate system was specifically designed

for clinical use in humans and thus, its manufacture, assembly and testing are intended to meet

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human safety requirements. Five quadriplegics patients in all are enrolled in the pilot study, which

was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The Future of Neural-Interfaces 

Cyberkinetics has a vision, CEO Tim Surgenor explained to Gizmag, but it is not promising "miracle

cures", or that quadriplegic people will be able to walk again - yet. Their primary goal is to help

restore many activities of daily living that are impossible for paralysed people and to provide a

platform for the development of a wide range of other assistive devices.

"Today quadriplegic people are satisfied if they get a rudimentary connection to the outside world.

What we're trying to give them is a connection that is as good and fast as using their hands. We're

going to teach them to think about moving the cursor using the part of the brain that usually controls

the arms to push keys and create, if you will, a mental device that can input information into a

computer. That is the first application, a kind of prosthetic, if you will. Then it is possible to use the

computer to control a robot arm or their own arm, but that would be down the road."

Existing technology stimulates muscle groups that can make an arm move. The problem Surgenorand his team faced was in creating an input or control signal. With the right control signal they found

they could stimulate the right muscle groups to make arm movement.

"Another application would be for somebody to handle a tricycle or exercise machine to help patients

who have a lot of trouble with their skeletal muscles. But walking, I have to say, would be very

complex. There's a lot of issues with balance and that's not going to be an easy thing to do, but it is

a goal."

Cyberkinetics hopes to refine the BrainGate in the next two years to develop a wireless device that is

completely implantable and doesn't have a plug, making it safer and less visible. And once the

basics of brain mapping are worked out there is potential for a wide variety of further applications,Surgenor explains.

"If you could detect or predict the onset of epilepsy, that would be a huge therapeutic application for

people who have seizures, which leads to the idea of a 'pacemaker for the brain'. So eventually

people may have this technology in their brains and if something starts to go wrong it will take a

therapeutic action. That could be available by 2007 to 2008."

Surgenor also sees a time not too far off where normal humans are interfacing with BrainGate

technology to enhance their relationship with the digital world - if they're willing to be implanted.

"If we can figure out how to make this device cheaper, there might be applications for people to

control machines, write software or perform intensive actions. But that's a good distance away. Right

now the only way to get that level of detail from these signals is to actually have surgery to place this

on the surface of the brain. It's not possible to do this with a non-invasive approach. For example,

you can have an EEG and if you concentrate really hard you can think about and move a cursor on a

screen, but if someone makes a loud noise or you get interrupted, you lose that ability. What we're

trying to make here is a direct connection. The [BrainGate] is going to be right there and you won't

have to think about it."

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DARPA 

The Brown University group was partially funded by the Defence Advanced Research Projects

Agency (DARPA), the central research and development organisation for the US Department of

Defence (DoD). DARPA has been interested in Brain-Machine-Interfaces (BMI) for a number of

years for military applications like wiring fighter pilots directly to their planes to allow autonomousflight from the safety of the ground. Future developments are also envisaged in which humans could

'download' memory implants for skill enhancement, allowing actions to be performed that have not

been learned directly.

Surgenor discounts the near term possibility of this type of 'memory enhancement', however, saying

several critical factors would have to be overcome.

"I don't know about memory but I do think that it will be possible to augment sense. Instantaneous

sensation will be possible. In order to do memory we'd have to figure out how the brain actually

stores that information, which is not well understood at this point.

"You can learn to interpret an electrical stimulation pattern in your ear and turn that into sound. Sothat's a sensation. Some companies are interested in connecting television cameras to the retina of

the eye, and there's other groups - academics, not companies - that are interested in putting a

connector directly to the part of the brain that processes vision. Those are the cortical applications

envisaged at the moment - vision and hearing."

BrainGate™: Turning Thoughts into Action. 

The concept of using thought to move a robotic device, a wheelchair, a prosthetic, or a

computer was once strictly the stuff of science fiction, but no longer. BrainGate™ collectsand analyzes the brainwaves of individuals with pronounced physical disabilities, turning

thoughts into actions. The potential to better communicate, interact, and improve people’s

way of life is about to explode.

Years of advanced research by world-renowned experts at prestigious universities—

including Brown, Harvard, Emory, MIT, Columbia, and the University of Utah—has resultedin the development of BrainGate™, a life-changing technology and device that givesrenewed hope to paraplegics, quadriplegics and others suffering from spinal cord injuries

and strokes. Eventually, it has the potential to revolutionize the way all of our brains work.

BrainGate has been featured on broadcasts such as 60 Minutes and in publications includingPopular Mechanics, Nature and Wired.

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The January issue of the Reader’s Digest features a most excellent article ‘Medical Breakthroughs 

2005′ . 

One of the showcased products in the article is BrainGate Neural Interface System ,

from CyberkineticsInc.:

In June a young man who is completely paralyzed underwent surgery to implant a small sensor in his

brain that allows him to write e-mail, play video games, change the channels on his TV and open the

curtains — using only his thoughts.

 Although FDA approval is still several years away, this is the beginning of “a new age of 

neurotechnology,” says John P. Donoghue, Ph.D., chair of the department of neuroscience at Brown

University. For 20 years he and his lab colleagues studied monkeys to learn how we go from thought to

action. Eventually they decoded how that works, and then Richard Normann, professor of bioengineering

at the University of Utah, invented a sensor that detects neural activity in the brain. This led to

development of the BrainGate Neural Interface System, to be used in a human clinical trial.

RD: How difficult is this surgery?

Donoghue: The surgeon makes a craniotomy that’s the diameter of a 50 -cent piece. The sensor, which is

the size of a baby aspirin with 100 tiny hair-like appendages, is implanted in the region that issues

commands to the arms. The software tells the surgeon exactly where to go and the whole surgical

procedure takes about two and a half hours. Afterward only a penny-sized connector to the computer can

be seen from the outside.

How does the system work?

The patient directs his thoughts to move the cursor on his computer screen. The sensor in his brain picks

up those hard-to-detect electrical signals and sends them through three computers that process them into

signals just like those from a computer mouse. These processors, which currently sit on a cart and are not

mobile, will eventually become wireless and small enough to fit inside the body.

So when he’s connected, the patient can just “think” the cursor from place to place on -screen like the rest

of us use a mouse. What else can he do?

He can also connect to other devices through the computer, such as a TV set, the control that opens and

closes the curtains, a powered wheelchair or even a mechanical hand. Eventually we could hook this up

to the person’s actual hand. 

Read the entire article at the Reader’s

Digest. More at the Cyberkinetics Inc.… 

UPDATE (01/15/05):

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Wired has an additional information (including a video) about the brain-computer interface: 

But other researchers are working on simpler, noninvasive BCIs. Jonathan Wolpaw, a professor at the

Wadsworth Center in New York, published a paper in December 2004 in theProceedings of the 

National Academy of Sciences  showing that his noninvasive electroencephalogram, or EEG, cap could

pick up brain signals at least as well as Cyberkinetics’ invasive technology.  

Both patients and their doctors would prefer not to open the skull to implant a BCI, but it’s not yet clear 

whether a BCI sitting outside the head will be as good at picking up brain waves as an implanted device.

Experts generally thought the answer was no until Wolpaw published his results.