Prosthesis with wireless control

Engineers for the first time connected a cyberhook to the brain wirelessly

RIA NewsA team of neurophysiologists and engineers has developed and successfully tested in practice a unique system of "wireless communication" between the brain and bionic limbs, using it to connect a cyber arm to the nervous system of a disabled person, according to an article published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience (Agashe et al., Global cortical activity predicts shape of hand during grasping; in additional in the materials for the article, you can watch two short videos – VM).

"The neuroprostheses that exist today give people back some degree of mobility and independence, but they are still extremely far from the dexterity and ease of use that is characteristic of our natural hands, especially when it comes to catching and grabbing some objects," said Jose Contreras-Vidal from the University of Houston (USA).

The neurointerface of Vidal and his colleagues is a conventional electroencephalographic "cap", with which brain signals are read, and a special computer algorithm that extracts information from them concerning the movement of human hands.

The work of this program, the cap and the neuroprosthesis connected to it, which was installed on the stump of the arm, was tested with the assistance of a 54-year-old disabled American who agreed to take part in the experiment, as well as several healthy men and women who expressed a desire to control the "extra" limb.

As this experience has shown, the "wireless" transmission of human commands to the cybernetic arm was in no way inferior to the classical methods of connecting the nervous system to artificial limbs through implantation of electrodes into the brain or nerves in the stumps of the hands.

For example, a ward of scientists successfully managed to grab and lift a water bottle, a credit card and other objects in 80% of cases. According to Vidal, this indicator can be improved up to 100% by further training with a prosthesis and improving the algorithm for processing signals coming from the brain.

A snapshot from the University of Houston press release:
Researchers Build Brain-Machine Interface to Control Prosthetic Hand – VM.

Such cybernetic prostheses do not require special care, training and constant medical intervention – to control them, it is enough for a disabled person to imagine that he moves his hand or grabs the desired object with it. Scientists hope that the convenience of their invention will help such cyber-limbs quickly get out of the walls of laboratories into medical practice.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru06.04.2015