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Paralyzed Man’s Arm Wired to Receive Brain Signals
Scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio say they’ve used electronics to get around a paralyzed man’s spinal injury, permitting him to use an implant in his brain to move his arm and hand.
The test represents the first time that signals collected in the brain have been conveyed directly to electrodes placed inside someone’s arm to restore movement, says Robert Kirsch, a biomedical engineer at Case Western. He also directs the Cleveland FES Center, which develops technologies for people with paralysis.
The project, described today at the meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago, is a step toward a wireless system able to transmit brain signals through the air to electronics sewn into the limbs of paralyzed people, thereby restoring the ability to carry out simple daily tasks.
People familiar with the study’s results said the volunteer’s movements are still rough, and not well coӧrdinated. “It’s not a fluid natural movement like you are picking up a cup of coffee to drink it,” says John Donoghue, one of the leaders of BrainGate, a consortium that is developing brain-computer interfaces and includes the Case Western team. “But the fact that they got a person to control their own body, to stimulate muscles in a specific way to make them move, and do it from a small patch of brain, is incredible.”
Volunteers in brain-implant studies have previously moved computer cursors and controlled robotic arms. Last year, a different Ohio man with partial arm paralysis received a brain implant and was able to mentally open and close his hand using strips of external electrodes placed around his forearm. That effort, called Neurobridge, is led by Ohio State University and Battelle Memorial Institute.
The Case Western project goes a step further because the new volunteer has a spinal injury that prevents him from moving his arms at all. Mary Buckett, a spokeswoman for the FES Center, said the participant’s identity was not yet being publicly released.
Bolu Ajiboye, the Case Western researcher who presented the team’s data in Chicago today, says that nine months ago surgeons implanted two bunches of silicon electrodes, called Utah arrays, into the volunteer’s motor cortex. That is the part of the brain where movements are planned. Wires from each array emerge from the skull through metal ports and connect to computers that interpret the signals.
To complete the bridge of the man’s spinal cord injury, doctors then inserted more than 16 fine wires into the volunteer’s arm and hand. Electrical impulses sent to those electrodes cause different muscles to contract, creating movement in the shoulder, elbow, and wrist, an approach known as functional electrical stimulation, or FES.
According to Kirsch, the volunteer is able to very accurately control a computer simulation of his wired-up arm using his brain signals. Moving the real arm under brain control has proved more challenging. “The virtual setup is perfect, it does what he says, but the FES system has to use his chronically paralyzed arm,” says Kirsch. He said the man has been paralyzed for so long that his muscles are weak and atrophied.
Efforts to combine brain-computer interfaces with FES systems began 20 years ago. In a 1998 experiment, also at Case Western, a volunteer named Jim Jatich used signals collected from an EEG cap he wore over his head to trigger an early FES device known as Freehand, which opened and closed his hand using stimulators (see “Mind over Muscles” and “Paralyzed Again”). That device required only a simple on/off signal, which Jatich was able to generate by modulating his EEG wave.
Implants placed in contact with the brain’s motor cortex can gather far more detailed information, however, including estimates of what limb movements a person is thinking about. In experiments using robotic arms, some volunteers have managed to move and stack objects (see “The Thought Experiment”). Scientists are now trying to establish similar or better control over a person’s own limbs.
“The vision is that a person would be walking around the room, doing normal things,” says Donoghue. “But that is a vision with many steps before it happens.”
For paralyzed individuals, a practical solution can’t come soon enough. Ian Burkhart, the participant in the Ohio State study, says he still works with researchers three days a week, practicing on picking up smaller objects. “If I could take the system I am using right now home with me, I would do it in a heartbeat,” says the 24-year-old, who was injured in a swimming accident. “There are limitations to it, but they’re easily outweighed by the benefit of being able to grasp something and move it around.”
Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/542581/paralyzed-mans-arm-wired-to-receive-brain-signals/
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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.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
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
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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