By Fred Schwaller Scott Imbrie still remembers the first time that physicians switched on the electrodes sitting on the surface of his brain. He felt a tingling, poking sensation in his hand, like “reaching into an evergreen bush”, he says. “It was like I was decorating a Christmas tree.” Back in 1985, a car crash shattered three of Imbrie’s vertebrae and severed 70% of his spinal cord, leaving him with very limited sensation or mobility in parts of his body. Now, thanks to an implanted brain–computer interface (BCI), Imbrie can operate a robotic arm, and receive sensory information related to what that arm is doing. Imbrie spends four days a week, three hours at a time, testing, refining and tuning the device with a team of researchers at the University of Chicago in Illinois. Scientists have been trying to restore mobility for people with missing or paralysed limbs for decades. The aim, historically, was to give people the ability to control prosthetics with commands from the nervous system. But this motor-first approach produced bionic limbs that were much less helpful than hoped: devices were cumbersome and provided only rudimentary control of a hand or leg. What’s more, they just didn’t feel like they were part of the body and required too much concentration to use. Scientists gradually began to realize that restoring full mobility meant restoring the ability to sense touch and temperature, says Robert Gaunt, a bioengineer at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. Gaunt says that this realization has led to a revolution in the field. A landmark study1 came in 2016, when a team led by Gaunt restored tactile sensations in a person with upper-limb paralysis using a computer chip implanted in a region of the brain that controls the hand. Gaunt then teamed up with his Pittsburgh colleague, bioengineer Jennifer Collinger, to integrate a robotic arm with the BCI, allowing the individual to feel and manipulate objects. © 2024 Springer Nature Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 29557 - Posted: 11.13.2024

By Simon Makin The word “bionic” conjures sci-fi visions of humans enhanced to superhuman levels. It’s true that engineering advances such as better motors and batteries, together with modern computing, mean that the required mechanical and electronic systems are no longer a barrier to advanced prostheses. But the field has struggled to integrate these powerful machines with the human body. That’s starting to change. A recent trial tested one new integration technique, which involves surgically reconstructing muscle pairs that give recipients a sense of the position and movement of a bionic limb. Signals from those muscles control robotic joints, so the prosthesis is fully under control of the user’s brain. The system enabled people with below-knee amputations to walk more naturally and better navigate slopes, stairs and obstacles, researchers reported in the July Nature Medicine. Engineers have typically viewed biology as a fixed limitation to be engineered around, says bioengineer Tyler Clites, who helped develop the technique several years ago while at MIT. “But if we look at the body as part of the system to be engineered, in parallel with the machine, the two will be able to interact better.” That view is driving a wave of techniques that reengineer the body to better integrate with the machine. Clites, now at UCLA, calls such techniques “anatomics,” to distinguish them from traditional bionics. “The issue we were tackling wasn’t an engineering problem,” he says. “The way the body had been manipulated during the amputation wasn’t leaving it in a position to be able to control the limbs we were creating.” In an anatomics approach, bones are exploited to provide stable anchors; nerves are rerouted to create control signals for robotic limbs or transmit sensory feedback; muscles are co-opted as biological amplifiers or grafted into place to provide more signal sources. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2024.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 29507 - Posted: 10.05.2024

Julia Kollewe Oran Knowlson, a British teenager with a severe type of epilepsy called Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, became the first person in the world to trial a new brain implant last October, with phenomenal results – his daytime seizures were reduced by 80%. “It’s had a huge impact on his life and has prevented him from having the falls and injuring himself that he was having before,” says Martin Tisdall, a consultant paediatric neurosurgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) in London, who implanted the device. “His mother was talking about how he’s had such a improvement in his quality of life, but also in his cognition: he’s more alert and more engaged.” Oran’s neurostimulator sits under the skull and sends constant electrical signals deep into his brain with the aim of blocking abnormal impulses that trigger seizures. The implant, called a Picostim and about the size of a mobile phone battery, is recharged via headphones and operates differently between day and night. The video player is currently playing an ad. You can skip the ad in 5 sec with a mouse or keyboard “The device has the ability to record from the brain, to measure brain activity, and that allows us to think about ways in which we could use that information to improve the efficacy of the stimulation that the kids are getting,” says Tisdall. “What we really want to do is to deliver this treatment on the NHS.” As part of a pilot, three more children with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome will be fitted with the implant in the coming weeks, followed by a full trial with 22 children early next year. If this goes well, the academic sponsors – Gosh and University College London – will apply for regulatory approval. Tim Denison – a professor of engineering science at Oxford University and co-founder and chief engineer of London-based Amber Therapeutics, which developed the implant with the university – hopes the device will be available on the NHS in four to five years’ time, and around the world. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limite

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 29442 - Posted: 08.19.2024

By Sara Talpos Nervous system disorders are among the leading causes of death and disability globally. Conditions such as paralysis and aphasia, which affects the ability to understand and produce language, can be devastating to patients and families. Significant investment has been put toward brain research, including the development of new technologies to treat some conditions, said Saskia Hendriks, a bioethicist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. These technologies may very well improve lives, but they also raise a host of ethical issues. That’s in part because of the unique nature of the brain, said Hendriks. It’s “the seat of many functions that we think are really important to ourselves, like consciousness, thoughts, memories, emotions, perceptions, actions, perhaps identity.” Saskia Hendriks, a bioethicist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, recently co-authored an essay on the emerging ethical questions in highly innovative brain research. In a June essay in The New England Journal of Medicine, Hendriks and a co-author, Christine Grady, outlined some of the thorny ethical questions related to brain research: What is the best way to protect the long-term interests of people who receive brain implants as part of a clinical trial? As technology gets better at decoding thoughts, how can researchers guard against violations of mental privacy? And what best way to prepare for the far-off possibility that consciousness may one day arise from work derived from human stem cells? Hendriks spoke about the essay in a Zoom interview. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Link ID: 29441 - Posted: 08.19.2024

By Lauren Leffer Noland Arbaugh has a computer chip embedded in his skull and an electrode array in his brain. But Arbaugh, the first user of the Neuralink brain-computer interface, or BCI, says he wouldn’t know the hardware was there if he didn’t remember going through with the surgery. “If I had lost my memory, and I woke up, and you told me there was something implanted in my brain, then I probably wouldn’t believe you,” says the 30-year-old Arizona resident, who has been paralyzed below the middle of his neck since a 2016 swimming accident. “I have no sensation of it—no way of telling it’s there unless someone goes and physically pushes on it.” The Neuralink chip may be physically unobtrusive, but Arbaugh says it’s had a big impact on his life, allowing him to “reconnect with the world.” He underwent robotic surgery in January to receive the N1 Implant, also called “the Link,” in Neuralink’s first approved human trial. BCIs have existed for decades. But because billionaire technologist Elon Musk owns Neuralink, the company has received outsize attention. It’s brought renewed public interest to a technology that could significantly improve the life of those living with quadriplegia, such as Arbaugh, as well as people with other disabilities or neurodegenerative diseases. BCIs record electrical activity in the brain and translate those data into output actions, such as opening and closing a robotic hand or clicking a computer mouse. They vary in their design, level of invasiveness and the resolution of the information they capture. Some detect neurons’ electrical activity with entirely external electroencephalogram (EEG) arrays placed over a subject’s head. Others use electrodes placed on the brain’s surface to track neural activity. Then there are intracortical devices, which use electrodes implanted directly into brain tissue, to get as close as possible to the targeted neurons. Neuralink’s implant falls into this category. © 2024 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN,

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 29362 - Posted: 06.15.2024

By Matthew Hutson ChatGPT and other AI tools are upending our digital lives, but our AI interactions are about to get physical. Humanoid robots trained with a particular type of AI to sense and react to their world could lend a hand in factories, space stations, nursing homes and beyond. Two recent papers in Science Robotics highlight how that type of AI — called reinforcement learning — could make such robots a reality. “We’ve seen really wonderful progress in AI in the digital world with tools like GPT,” says Ilija Radosavovic, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. “But I think that AI in the physical world has the potential to be even more transformational.” The state-of-the-art software that controls the movements of bipedal bots often uses what’s called model-based predictive control. It’s led to very sophisticated systems, such as the parkour-performing Atlas robot from Boston Dynamics. But these robot brains require a fair amount of human expertise to program, and they don’t adapt well to unfamiliar situations. Reinforcement learning, or RL, in which AI learns through trial and error to perform sequences of actions, may prove a better approach. “We wanted to see how far we can push reinforcement learning in real robots,” says Tuomas Haarnoja, a computer scientist at Google DeepMind and coauthor of one of the Science Robotics papers. Haarnoja and colleagues chose to develop software for a 20-inch-tall toy robot called OP3, made by the company Robotis. The team not only wanted to teach OP3 to walk but also to play one-on-one soccer. “Soccer is a nice environment to study general reinforcement learning,” says Guy Lever of Google DeepMind, a coauthor of the paper. It requires planning, agility, exploration, cooperation and competition. © Society for Science & the Public 2000–2024.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 29328 - Posted: 05.29.2024

By Christina Jewett Just four months ago, Noland Arbaugh had a circle of bone removed from his skull and hair-thin sensor tentacles slipped into his brain. A computer about the size of a small stack of quarters was placed on top and the hole was sealed. Paralyzed below the neck, Mr. Arbaugh is the first patient to take part in the clinical trial of humans testing Elon Musk’s Neuralink device, and his early progress was greeted with excitement. Working with engineers, Mr. Arbaugh, 30, trained computer programs to translate the firing of neurons in his brain into the act of moving a cursor up, down and around. His command of the cursor was soon so agile that he could challenge his stepfather at Mario Kart and play an empire-building video game late into the night. But as weeks passed, about 85 percent of the device’s tendrils slipped out of his brain. Neuralink’s staff had to retool the system to allow him to regain command of the cursor. Though he needed to learn a new method to click on something, he can still skate the cursor across the screen. Neuralink advised him against a surgery to replace the threads, he said, adding that the situation had stabilized. The setback became public earlier this month. And although the diminished activity was initially difficult and disappointing, Mr. Arbaugh said it had been worth it for Neuralink to move forward in a tech-medical field aimed at helping people regain their speech, sight or movement. “I just want to bring everyone along this journey with me,” he said. “I want to show everyone how amazing this is. And it’s just been so rewarding. So I’m really excited to keep going.” From a small desert town in Arizona, Mr. Arbaugh has emerged as an enthusiastic spokesman for Neuralink, one of at least five companies leveraging decades of academic research to engineer a device that can help restore function in people with disabilities or degenerative diseases. © 2024 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 29320 - Posted: 05.23.2024

Ian Sample Science editor A device that stimulates the spinal nerves with electrical pulses appears to boost how well people recover from major spinal cord injuries, doctors say. An international trial found that patients who had lost some or all use of their hands and arms after a spinal cord injury regained strength, control and sensation when the stimulation was applied during standard rehabilitation exercises. The improvements were small but were described by doctors and patients as life-changing because of the impact they had on the patients’ daily routines and quality of life. “It actually makes it easier for people to move, including people who have complete loss of movement in their hands and arms,” said Prof Chet Moritz, in the department of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle. “The benefits accumulate gradually over time as we pair this spinal stimulation with intensive therapy of the hands and arms, such that there are benefits even when the stimulator is turned off.” Rather than being implanted, the Arc-Ex device is worn externally and uses electrodes that are placed on the skin near the section of the spinal cord responsible for controlling a particular movement or function. The researchers believe that electrical stimulation helps nerves that remain intact after the injury to send signals and ultimately partially restore some communication between the brain and paralysed body part. More than half of patients who suffer spinal cord injuries still have some intact nerves that cross the injury site. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Link ID: 29315 - Posted: 05.21.2024

By Liam Drew The first person to receive a brain-monitoring device from neurotechnology company Neuralink can control a computer cursor with their mind, Elon Musk, the firm’s founder, revealed this week. But researchers say that this is not a major feat — and they are concerned about the secrecy around the device’s safety and performance. The company is “only sharing the bits that they want us to know about”, says Sameer Sheth, a neurosurgeon specializing in implanted neurotechnology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. “There’s a lot of concern in the community about that.” Threads for thoughts Musk announced on 29 January that Neuralink had implanted a brain–computer interface (BCI) into a human for the first time. Neuralink, which is headquartered in Fremont, California, is the third company to start long-term trials in humans. Some implanted BCIs sit on the brain’s surface and record the average firing of populations of neurons, but Neuralink’s device, and at least two others, penetrates the brain to record the activity of individual neurons. Neuralink’s BCI contains 1,024 electrodes — many more than previous systems — arranged on innovative pliable threads. The company has also produced a surgical robot for inserting its device. But it has not confirmed whether that system was used for the first human implant. Details about the first recipient are also scarce, although Neuralink’s volunteer recruitment brochure says that people with quadriplegia stemming from certain conditions “may qualify”.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 29163 - Posted: 02.25.2024

Nancy S. Jecker & Andrew Ko Putting a computer inside someone’s brain used to feel like the edge of science fiction. Today, it’s a reality. Academic and commercial groups are testing “brain-computer interface” devices to enable people with disabilities to function more independently. Yet Elon Musk’s company, Neuralink, has put this technology front and center in debates about safety, ethics and neuroscience. In January 2024, Musk announced that Neuralink implanted its first chip in a human subject’s brain. The Conversation reached out to two scholars at the University of Washington School of Medicine – Nancy Jecker, a bioethicst, and Andrew Ko, a neurosurgeon who implants brain chip devices – for their thoughts on the ethics of this new horizon in neuroscience. How does a brain chip work? Neuralink’s coin-size device, called N1, is designed to enable patients to carry out actions just by concentrating on them, without moving their bodies. Subjects in the company’s PRIME study – short for Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface – undergo surgery to place the device in a part of the brain that controls movement. The chip records and processes the brain’s electrical activity, then transmits this data to an external device, such as a phone or computer. The external device “decodes” the patient’s brain activity, learning to associate certain patterns with the patient’s goal: moving a computer cursor up a screen, for example. Over time, the software can recognize a pattern of neural firing that consistently occurs while the participant is imagining that task, and then execute the task for the person. © 2010–2024, The Conversation US, Inc.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 29151 - Posted: 02.20.2024

By Ben Guarino Billionaire technologist Elon Musk announced this week that his company Neuralink has implanted its brain-computer interface into a human for the first time. The recipient was “recovering well,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Monday evening, adding that initial results showed “promising neuron spike detection”—a reference to brain cells’ electrical activity. Each wireless Neuralink device contains a chip and electrode arrays of more than 1,000 superthin, flexible conductors that a surgical robot threads into the cerebral cortex. There the electrodes are designed to register thoughts related to motion. In Musk’s vision, an app will eventually translate these signals to move a cursor or produce text—in short, it will enable computer control by thinking. “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal,” Musk wrote of the first Neuralink product, which he said is named Telepathy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved human clinical trials for Neuralink in May 2023. And last September the company announced it was opening enrollment in its first study to people with quadriplegia. Monday’s announcement did not take neuroscientists by surprise. Musk, the world’s richest man, “said he was going to do it,” says John Donoghue, an expert in brain-computer interfaces at Brown University. “He had done the preliminary work, built on the shoulders of others, including what we did starting in the early 2000s.” Neuralink’s original ambitions, which Musk outlined when he founded the company in 2016, included meshing human brains with artificial intelligence. Its more immediate aims seem in line with the neural keyboards and other devices that people with paralysis already use to operate computers. The methods and speed with which Neuralink pursued those goals, however, have resulted in federal investigations into dead study animals and the transportation of hazardous material. © 2024 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29124 - Posted: 01.31.2024

By Ben Guarino Billionaire technologist Elon Musk announced this week that his company Neuralink has implanted its brain-computer interface into a human for the first time. The recipient was “recovering well,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Monday evening, adding that initial results showed “promising neuron spike detection”—a reference to brain cells’ electrical activity. Each wireless Neuralink device contains a chip and electrode arrays of more than 1,000 superthin, flexible conductors that a surgical robot threads into the cerebral cortex. There the electrodes are designed to register thoughts related to motion. In Musk’s vision, an app will eventually translate these signals to move a cursor or produce text—in short, it will enable computer control by thinking. “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal,” Musk wrote of the first Neuralink product, which he said is named Telepathy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had approved human clinical trials for Neuralink in May 2023. And last September the company announced it was opening enrollment in its first study to people with quadriplegia. Monday’s announcement did not take neuroscientists by surprise. Musk, the world’s richest man, “said he was going to do it,” says John Donoghue, an expert in brain-computer interfaces at Brown University. “He had done the preliminary work, built on the shoulders of others, including what we did starting in the early 2000s.” Neuralink’s original ambitions, which Musk outlined when he founded the company in 2016, included meshing human brains with artificial intelligence. Its more immediate aims seem in line with the neural keyboards and other devices that people with paralysis already use to operate computers. The methods and speed with which Neuralink pursued those goals, however, have resulted in federal investigations into dead study animals and the transportation of hazardous material. © 2024 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 29123 - Posted: 01.31.2024

By Benjamin Mueller Once their scalpels reach the edge of a brain tumor, surgeons are faced with an agonizing decision: cut away some healthy brain tissue to ensure the entire tumor is removed, or give the healthy tissue a wide berth and risk leaving some of the menacing cells behind. Now scientists in the Netherlands report using artificial intelligence to arm surgeons with knowledge about the tumor that may help them make that choice. The method, described in a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, involves a computer scanning segments of a tumor’s DNA and alighting on certain chemical modifications that can yield a detailed diagnosis of the type and even subtype of the brain tumor. That diagnosis, generated during the early stages of an hourslong surgery, can help surgeons decide how aggressively to operate, the researchers said. In the future, the method may also help steer doctors toward treatments tailored for a specific subtype of tumor. “It’s imperative that the tumor subtype is known at the time of surgery,” said Jeroen de Ridder, an associate professor in the Center for Molecular Medicine at UMC Utrecht, a Dutch hospital, who helped lead the study. “What we have now uniquely enabled is to allow this very fine-grained, robust, detailed diagnosis to be performed already during the surgery.” A brave new world. A new crop of chatbots powered by artificial intelligence has ignited a scramble to determine whether the technology could upend the economics of the internet, turning today’s powerhouses into has-beens and creating the industry’s next giants. Here are the bots to know: ChatGPT. ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence language model from a research lab, OpenAI, has been making headlines since November for its ability to respond to complex questions, write poetry, generate code, plan vacations and translate languages. GPT-4, the latest version introduced in mid-March, can even respond to images (and ace the Uniform Bar Exam). © 2023 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 28958 - Posted: 10.12.2023

Kari Paul and Maanvi Singh Elon Musk’s brain-implant company Neuralink last week received regulatory approval to conduct the first clinical trial of its experimental device in humans. But the billionaire executive’s bombastic promotion of the technology, his leadership record at other companies and animal welfare concerns relating to Neuralink experiments have raised alarm. “I was surprised,” said Laura Cabrera, a neuroethicist at Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute about the decision by the US Food and Drug Administration to let the company go ahead with clinical trials. Musk’s erratic leadership at Twitter and his “move fast” techie ethos raise questions about Neuralink’s ability to responsibly oversee the development of an invasive medical device capable of reading brain signals, Cabrera argued. “Is he going to see a brain implant device as something that requires not just extra regulation, but also ethical consideration?” she said. “Or will he just treat this like another gadget?” Neuralink is far from the first or only company working on brain interface devices. For decades, research teams around the world have been exploring the use of implants and devices to treat conditions such as paralysis and depression. Already, thousands use neuroprosthetics like cochlear implants for hearing. But the broad scope of capabilities Musk is promising from the Neuralink device have garnered skepticism from experts. Neuralink entered the industry in 2016 and has designed a brain-computer interface (BCI) called the Link – an electrode-laden computer chip that can be sewn into the surface of the brain and connects it to external electronics – as well as a robotic device that implants the chip. © 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 17: Learning and Memory; Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory and Learning; Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 28816 - Posted: 06.07.2023

By Oliver Whang Gert-Jan Oskam was living in China in 2011 when he was in a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed from the hips down. Now, with a combination of devices, scientists have given him control over his lower body again. “For 12 years I’ve been trying to get back my feet,” Mr. Oskam said in a press briefing on Tuesday. “Now I have learned how to walk normal, natural.” In a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers in Switzerland described implants that provided a “digital bridge” between Mr. Oskam’s brain and his spinal cord, bypassing injured sections. The discovery allowed Mr. Oskam, 40, to stand, walk and ascend a steep ramp with only the assistance of a walker. More than a year after the implant was inserted, he has retained these abilities and has actually showed signs of neurological recovery, walking with crutches even when the implant was switched off. “We’ve captured the thoughts of Gert-Jan, and translated these thoughts into a stimulation of the spinal cord to re-establish voluntary movement,” Grégoire Courtine, a spinal cord specialist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, who helped lead the research, said at the press briefing. Jocelyne Bloch, a neuroscientist at the University of Lausanne who placed the implant in Mr. Oskam, added, “It was quite science fiction in the beginning for me, but it became true today.” A brave new world. A new crop of chatbots powered by artificial intelligence has ignited a scramble to determine whether the technology could upend the economics of the internet, turning today’s powerhouses into has-beens and creating the industry’s next giants. Here are the bots to know: © 2023 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Cells and Structure of the Nervous System
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 2: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals
Link ID: 28801 - Posted: 05.27.2023

By Christina Jewett and Cade Metz A jumble of cords and two devices the size of soda cans protrude from Austin Beggin’s head when he undergoes testing with a team of researchers studying brain implants that are meant to restore function to those who are paralyzed. Despite the cumbersome equipment, it is also when Mr. Beggin feels the most free. He was paralyzed from the shoulders down after a diving accident eight years ago, and the brain device picks up the electrical surges that his brain generates as he envisions moving his arm. It converts those signals to cuffs on the major nerves in his arm. They allow him to do things he had not done on his own since the accident, like lift a pretzel to his mouth. “This is like the first time I’ve ever gotten the opportunity or I’ve ever been privileged and blessed enough to think, ‘When I want to open my hand, I open it,’” Mr. Beggin, 30, said. Days like that are always “a special day.” The work at the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center represents some of the most cutting-age research in the brain-computer interface field, with the team connecting the brain to the arm to restore motion. It’s a field that Elon Musk wants to advance, announcing in a recent presentation that brain implants from his company Neuralink would someday help restore sight to the blind or return people like Mr. Beggin to “full-body functionality.” Mr. Musk also said the Neuralink device could allow anyone to use phones and other machines with new levels of speed and efficiency. Neuroscientists and Mr. Beggin alike see such giant advances as decades away, though. Scientists who have approval to test such devices in humans are inching toward restoring normal function in typing, speaking and limited movements. Researchers caution that the goal is much harder and more dangerous than it may seem. And they warn that Mr. Musk’s goals may never be possible — if it is even worth doing in the first place. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 28591 - Posted: 12.13.2022

By Kurt Kleiner The human brain is an amazing computing machine. Weighing only three pounds or so, it can process information a thousand times faster than the fastest supercomputer, store a thousand times more information than a powerful laptop, and do it all using no more energy than a 20-watt lightbulb. Researchers are trying to replicate this success using soft, flexible organic materials that can operate like biological neurons and someday might even be able to interconnect with them. Eventually, soft “neuromorphic” computer chips could be implanted directly into the brain, allowing people to control an artificial arm or a computer monitor simply by thinking about it. Like real neurons — but unlike conventional computer chips — these new devices can send and receive both chemical and electrical signals. “Your brain works with chemicals, with neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Our materials are able to interact electrochemically with them,” says Alberto Salleo, a materials scientist at Stanford University who wrote about the potential for organic neuromorphic devices in the 2021 Annual Review of Materials Research. Salleo and other researchers have created electronic devices using these soft organic materials that can act like transistors (which amplify and switch electrical signals) and memory cells (which store information) and other basic electronic components. The work grows out of an increasing interest in neuromorphic computer circuits that mimic how human neural connections, or synapses, work. These circuits, whether made of silicon, metal or organic materials, work less like those in digital computers and more like the networks of neurons in the human brain. © 2022 Annual Reviews

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 3: Neurophysiology: The Generation, Transmission, and Integration of Neural Signals; Chapter 17: Learning and Memory
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 28449 - Posted: 08.27.2022

By Ferris Jabr To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. On the evening of Oct. 10, 2006, Dennis DeGray’s mind was nearly severed from his body. After a day of fishing, he returned to his home in Pacific Grove, Calif., and realized he had not yet taken out the trash or recycling. It was raining fairly hard, so he decided to sprint from his doorstep to the garbage cans outside with a bag in each hand. As he was running, he slipped on a patch of black mold beneath some oak trees, landed hard on his chin, and snapped his neck between his second and third vertebrae. While recovering, DeGray, who was 53 at the time, learned from his doctors that he was permanently paralyzed from the collarbones down. With the exception of vestigial twitches, he cannot move his torso or limbs. “I’m about as hurt as you can get and not be on a ventilator,” he told me. For several years after his accident, he “simply laid there, watching the History Channel” as he struggled to accept the reality of his injury. Some time later, while at a fund-raising event for stem-cell research, he met Jaimie Henderson, a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford University. The pair got to talking about robots, a subject that had long interested DeGray, who grew up around his family’s machine shop. As DeGray remembers it, Henderson captivated him with a single question: Do you want to fly a drone? Henderson explained that he and his colleagues had been developing a brain-computer interface: an experimental connection between someone’s brain and an external device, like a computer, robotic limb or drone, which the person could control simply by thinking. DeGray was eager to participate, eventually moving to Menlo Park to be closer to Stanford as he waited for an opening in the study and the necessary permissions. In the summer of 2016, Henderson opened DeGray’s skull and exposed his cortex — the thin, wrinkled, outermost layer of the brain — into which he implanted two 4-millimeter-by-4-millimeter electrode arrays resembling miniature beds of nails. Each array had 100 tiny metal spikes that, collectively, recorded electric impulses surging along a couple of hundred neurons or so in the motor cortex, a brain region involved in voluntary movement. © 2022 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System
Link ID: 28326 - Posted: 05.14.2022

By Pallab Ghosh A paralysed man with a severed spinal cord has been able to walk again, thanks to an implant developed by a team of Swiss researchers. It is the first time someone who has had a complete cut to their spinal cord has been able to walk freely. The same technology has improved the health of another paralysed patient to the extent that he has been able to become a father. The research has been published in the journal Nature Medicine. Michel Roccati was paralysed after a motorbike accident five years ago. His spinal cord was completely severed - and he has no feeling at all in his legs. But he can now walk - because of an electrical implant that has been surgically attached to his spine. Someone this injured has never been able to walk like this before. The researchers stress that it isn't a cure for spinal injury and that the technology is still too complicated to be used in everyday life, but hail it nonetheless as a major step to improving quality of life. I met Michel at the lab where the implant was created. He told me that the technology "is a gift to me". "I stand up, walk where I want to, I can walk the stairs - it's almost a normal life." It was not the technology alone that drove Michel's recovery. The young Italian has a steely resolve. He told me that from the moment of his accident, he was determined to make as much progress as he could. "I used to box, run and do fitness training in the gym. But after the accident, I could not do the things that I loved to do, but I did not let my mood go down. I never stopped my rehabilitation. I wanted to solve this problem." The speed of Michel's recovery amazed the neurosurgeon who inserted the implant and expertly attached electrodes to individual nerve fibres, Prof Jocelyne Bloch at Lausanne University Hospital "I was extremely surprised," she told me. "Michel is absolutely incredible. He should be able to use this technology to progress and be better and better." © 2022 BBC.

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 13: Memory and Learning
Link ID: 28194 - Posted: 02.09.2022

By Nayef Al-Rodhan o In Chile, the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research has begun to debate a “neurorights” bill to be written into the country’s constitution. The world, and most importantly the OECD, UNESCO and the United Nations, should be watching closely. The Chilean bill sets out to protect the right to personal identity, free will, mental privacy, equitable access to technologies that augment human capacities, and the right to protection against bias and discrimination. The landmark bill would be the first of its kind to pioneer a regulatory framework which protects human rights from the manipulation of brain activity. The relatively nascent concept of neurorights follows a number of recent medical innovations, most notably brain-computer interface technology (BCI), which has the potential to revolutionize the field of neuroscience. BCI-based therapy may be useful for poststroke motor rehabilitation and may be a potential method for the accurate detection and treatment of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Advocates claim there is therefore a moral imperative to use the technology, given the benefits it could bring; others worry about its ethical, moral and societal consequences. Many (mistakenly) see this process as being potentially undermined by premature governance restrictions, or accuse any mention of brake mechanisms as an exaggerated reaction to an unlikely science-fiction scenario. © 2021 Scientific American

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 11: Motor Control and Plasticity; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 5: The Sensorimotor System; Chapter 14: Attention and Higher Cognition
Link ID: 27841 - Posted: 06.02.2021