Scientist unveils mind-controlled robot for paraplegics

A professor at a Swiss university on Tuesday unveiled a robot that can be controlled by the brainwaves of a paraplegic person wearing an electrode-fitted cap, news agency ATS reported.

A paralysed man at a hospital in the town of Sion demonstrated the device, sending a mental command to a computer in his room, which transmitted it to another computer that moved a small robot 60 kilometres (37 miles) away in Lausanne.

The system was developed by Jose Millan, a professor at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne who specialises in non-invasive interfaces between machines and the brain.

The same technology can be used to drive a wheelchair, Millan said.

"Once the movement has begun, the brain can relax, otherwise the person would soon be exhausted," he said.

But the technology has its limits, he added. The brain signals can be scrambled if too many people are gathered around a wheelchair, for example.

Besides making paraplegics mobile, neuroprosthetics could be used to help patients recover lost senses, researchers said.

Professor Stephanie Lacour and her team are working on an "electric skin" for amputees, a glove fitted with tiny sensors that would send information directly to the user's nervous system.

Eventually, researchers say they hope to create mechanised prosthetics that are as mobile and sensitive as a natural hand, Lacour said.

Other researchers at Lausanne are working on enabling paraplegics to walk again with electrodes implanted in their spinal cords.

"The goal is that after a year of training with a robotic aide, the patient will be able to walk without a robot. The electrodes would stay implanted for life," said Professor Gregoire Courtine.

He said he is currently setting up clinical trials and hopes to run tests at Zurich's university hospital within a year.

Japanese man takes robot piggyback on French landmark

A robotic outfit that bestows superhuman strength allowed a paralysed Japanese man to tour the steep lanes of France's Mont-Saint-Michel landmark Tuesday -- on a friend's back.

Seiji Uchida, 49, said he had dreamed of visiting the medieval site, a warren of steep steps on a sea-lapped mound off northwestern France, but could not because a motorbike accident in his twenties left him unable to walk.

On Tuesday he fulfilled his wish however, when student Hiromasa Hara donned a Hybrid Assistive Limb, a body-length device developed by Japanese scientists, and gave Uchida a superhuman piggy-back.

The suit is attached to the wearer's back, arms and legs. Reading brain signals and following the wearer's muscular actions, it takes the strain of the load, allowing him to lift up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds).

"It was a dream to come here," said Uchida, who travelled with his wife and four children. "The mount is very difficult to access for someone in a wheelchair," he added.

"I want to show my children that even with a disability you can tackle anything you want."

Japanese man takes Robo-suit ride up Mont-Saint-Michel

Seiji Uchida (up), 49, a Japanese man paralysed from the waist down, is carried by Tsukuba University student Ekuni using a Hybrid Assisted Limb (HAL) robo-suit on July 5 , 2011 as they climb the stairs of the Mont Saint-Michel, Normandy, north-western France.

The HAL suit, allowing the wearer to carry a heavy load, works by detecting faint bioelectrical signals using pads placed on specific areas of the body.

The pads move the HAL suit accordingly.

Image by: AFP PHOTO KENZO TRIBOUILLARD

Implant could wirelessly relay brain signals to paralysed limbs

For a great number of people with paralysed limbs, the reason that they can't move the arm or leg in question is because the "move" command isn't able to reach from their brain to the limb.

This is often due to damage to the nervous system, or to the brain, although the limb itself is still perfectly functional ... so it could still move, if only there was a way of getting the signal to it.

Well, one might be on its way. Scientists at the University of Michigan have developed an implant known as the BioBolt, that wirelessly transmits neural signals from the brain to a computer. In the future, that computer could hopefully then relay them onto a formerly-paralised limb.

Neural implants do already exist, although previous attempts have required an access hole in the patient's skull to remain open while the device is in use - not all that practical for everyday use. The BioBolt, by contrast, would sit underneath the skin and within a hole in the skull, effectively sealing it.

True to its name, the device (which is about as wide as a dime) does indeed look like a bolt. It has a film of microcircuits on the bottom, which sit in contact with the brain.

Those microcircuits detect the firing of neurons, and based on the patterns of those firings, are able to recognise certain commands. Using the patient's skin as a conductor, the BioBolt then amplifies, filters and digitizes those signals, then transmits them to an external computer.

The incorporation of the conductive qualities of the skin is a key part of the technology, as this allows the implant to use relatively little power for its wireless transmissions.

Down the road, it is hoped that the computer could be replaced with wearable electronics, that might take the form of a watch or even a pair of earrings.

Those electronics could send the brain signals directly to the muscles of paralyzed limbs, stimulating them to perform the desired movements. The University of Michigan researchers, however, state that such a system is still years away.

Breakthrough, nerve connections are regenerated after spinal cord injury

Researchers for the first time have induced robust regeneration of nerve connections that control voluntary movement after spinal cord injury, showing the potential for new therapeutic approaches to paralysis and other motor function impairments.

In a study on rodents, the UC Irvine, UC San Diego and Harvard University team achieved this breakthrough by turning back the developmental clock in a molecular pathway critical for the growth of corticospinal tract nerve connections.

They did this by deleting an enzyme called PTEN (a phosphatase and tensin homolog), which controls a molecular pathway called mTOR that is a key regulator of cell growth. PTEN activity is low early during development, allowing cell proliferation. PTEN then turns on when growth is completed, inhibiting mTOR and precluding any ability to regenerate.

Trying to find a way to restore early-developmental-stage cell growth in injured tissue, Zhigang He, a senior neurology researcher at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School, first showed in a 2008 study that blocking PTEN in mice enabled the regeneration of connections from the eye to the brain after optic nerve damage.

He then partnered with Oswald Steward of UCI and Binhai Zheng of UCSD to see if the same approach could promote nerve regeneration in injured spinal cord sites. Results of their study appear online in Nature Neuroscience.

“Until now, such robust nerve regeneration has been impossible in the spinal cord,” said Steward, anatomy & neurobiology professor and director of the Reeve-Irvine Research Center at UCI. “Paralysis and loss of function from spinal cord injury has been considered untreatable, but our discovery points the way toward a potential therapy to induce regeneration of nerve connections following spinal cord injury in people.”

Bionic brain chips could overcome paralysis - New Scientist

Bionic brain chips could overcome paralysis - New Scientist

The idea is to implant electronic chips in the relevant regions of the brain to record neural activity. Then a decoder deciphers the neural chatter, often from thousands of neurons, to figure out what the brain wants the body to do. These messages must then be relayed - ideally wirelessly - to electrodes that deliver a pulse of electricity to stimulate the muscles into action. Such "brain chips" are already restoring hearing to the deaf and vision to the blind, and helping to stave off epileptic fits, so the idea isn't as far-fetched as it might sound (see "Bionic medicine").

Shared via AddThis