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Experimental Surgery Aims to Revive a Paralyzed Limb
A paralyzed man will receive experimental surgery connecting a brain chip to systems that activate muscles in his arm.
Doctors will attempt to reanimate a patient’s paralyzed arm with a pioneering surgery that involves capturing signals from his brain and restoring movement through a fine network of electronics linked to arm muscles.
The new effort, being planned by researchers at Case Western Reserve University, will use a brain computer interface, or BCI, developed by researchers at Brown University and Massachusetts General Hospital. In previous work, patients have used this interface to control a computer cursor or a robotic arm (see “Brain Chip Helps Quadriplegics Move Robotic Arms with Their Thoughts” and “Patient Shows New Dexterity with a Mind-Controlled Robot Arm”).
The new effort will use the same technology to control the patient’s actual arm with a system called functional electrical stimulation (FES). This will send signals to as many as 18 arm and hand muscles to allow the subject, who is paralyzed from the neck down, to perform tasks such as eating and nose-scratching.
“This will be the first time someone has hooked up a BCI to an FES device,” saysDaniel Moran, a neuroscientist at Washington University at St. Louis who is not involved in the study. “They’re putting the whole system together.” The surgery may occur this or next year, according to Case Western researchers.
Muscle activation technology has long been tested in paralyzed patients. Various patients can do things like press a button to activate muscles in their otherwise paralyzed legs to allow them to stand and even move about with a walker, helped along by legs that can stiffen and swing forward. If the patient does not have the use of his hands, activation of paralyzed muscles can be triggered by movements that a patient can control in his arm, cheek, or neck. The new effort will use the brain itself to send these signals.
At the heart of the new device is the brain implant—a small probe four millimeters on each side with 96 hair-like electrodes that penetrate 1.5 millimeters into a portion of the motor cortex that controls arm movements. The implant records the impulses of dozens of neurons corresponding to a patient’s intent to move.
In preparation for reconnecting real arm muscles, researchers have recently shown that the brain chip can control a virtual representation of those arm muscles. The ongoing clinical trial is known as BrainGate2.
While the signals from the brain correspond to a direction to move something, the algorithm translates those triggers into carefully coӧrdinated contractions in as many as 18 muscles, based on the model of those muscles’ movements and the degrees of arm freedom.
“The patient thinks ‘up and to the right,’ and we have a controller that actually figures out the correct muscle activations to move in that direction,” says Robert Kirsch, the project’s principal investigator, chair of biomedical engineering at Case Western, and executive director of the Department of Veterans AffairsFunctional Electrical Stimulation Center.
The current version of that model includes 29 muscles, divided into 138 muscle elements, and 11 joints. On a screen, the patient sees an image of the virtual arm, and works to generate brain commands that ultimately move the virtual arm to touch a red spot, making it turn green.
Leigh Hochberg, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, associate professor of engineering at Brown, and one of the leaders of the underlying research collaboration, says the experiment on the virtual arm, first conducted in 2011, was a crucial milestone. That, together with recent advances in monkeyexperiments “provide encouragement that the goal is within reach” to connect brain chips to muscle stimulation, he says.
Even if successful, the reanimated arm itself would still not be able to convey a sense of touch back to the wearer. In a separate set of experiments, researchers at Case Western are testing a system that provides a sense of touch thanks to sensors on a prosthetic hand wired to peripheral nerves in the patient’s arm (see “An Artificial Hand with Real Feelings”). In theory, such sensory feedback could be delivered directly to the brain, too.
Neuroscientists are also working on better brain implants. Current interfaces used in the project essentially collect someone’s intent to move something in a certain direction. Next-generation versions would actually collect more natural muscle-movement commands from the brain itself—a more challenging task but one that promises more realistic control. Another advance under development is a wireless interface between the skull connector and the system that reads and interprets the signals from the brain (see “A Wireless Brain Computer Interface”).
Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/523436/experimental-surgery-aims-to-revive-a-paralyzed-limb/
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
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Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
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• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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