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One of the most exciting—and promising—areas of basic and applied research in modern neuroscience is the field of brain-machine interface (BMI). By creating a way to link living brain tissue to a variety of artificial tools, BMIs have made it possible for non-human primates to use the electrical activity produced by hundreds of neurons, located in multiple regions of their brains, to directly control the movements of a variety of robotic devices, including prosthetic arms and legs.
Over the past decade, neuroscientists at the Duke University Center for Neuro-engineering (DUCN) have been leaders at the forefront of BMI research. Their work raises the hope that in the not-too-distant future, patients suffering from a variety of neurological disorders that lead to devastating levels of paralysis may be able to recover their mobility by harnessing their own brain impulses to directly control sophisticated neuroprostheses.
Work at Duke and in laboratories around the world has provided many reasons to feel optimistic about this potentially revolutionary scenario in rehabilitation medicine. In 2003, we proved that, with the BMI, monkeys could make a robotic arm reach out and grasp objects simply by thinking about doing so. Just over a year ago, we demonstrated that a monkey could go even further: From the DUCN in Durham, the monkey was able to make a robot located halfway around the world walk on a treadmill by using her brain activity to control and guide it.
But this is only the beginning. The success of these experiments demonstrates that by working at the convergence of multiple fields of inquiry (computer science, microelectronics, and robotics, for example), modern brain researchers are quickly acquiring the ability to translate major scientific breakthroughs into a variety of promising new clinical tools designed to assist patients. These results may well lead to major advances in mitigating the clinical effects of neurological dysfunctions caused by spinal-cord injuries or such conditions as Parkinson's disease.
For example, one of our recent studies using animals has led to the development of a new prosthetic device that holds great potential for treating Parkinson's disease. In our study, the new device was attached to the surface of the spinal cord in mice and rats that had depleted levels of dopamine and exhibited the impaired motor skills characteristic of the advanced stages of Parkinson's disease. When the device was activated, the dopamine-depleted animals' slow, stiff movements were replaced, within seconds, with the active motor behaviors of healthy animals. (The study is explained in detail in the March 20 cover article in the journal Science.)
The realization of this and other technological advances over the next twenty-five years may well be accelerated by the Walk Again Project, an international consortium of leading research centers around the world organized by the DUCN. The Walk Again Project represents a new paradigm for scientific collaboration among the world's academic institutions, bringing together a global network of science and technology experts, distributed among all the continents, to achieve a key humanitarian goal.
The project's central goal is to develop and implement the first BMI capable of restoring full mobility to patients suffering from a severe degree of paralysis. This lofty goal will be achieved by building a neuroprosthetic device that uses a BMI as its core, allowing the patients to capture and use their own voluntary brain activity to control the movements of a full-body prosthetic device. This "wearable robot," also known as an "exoskeleton," will be designed to sustain and carry the patient's body according to his or her mental will.
In contributing their key intellectual assets and expertise to achieving such transcendent humanitarian feats, these scientists will once again prove the value of science as a fundamental agent of social transformation.
Scientific American
