Direct Brain Stimulation  

Scientists have published the first demonstration of humans playing a simple, two-dimensional computer game using only input from direct brain stimulation—without relying on any usual sensory cues from sight, hearing or touch.

University of Washington researchers have taken a first step in showing how humans can interact with virtual realities via direct brain stimulation.

In a paper published online in Frontiers in Robotics and AI, they describe their demonstration of humans playing a simple, two-dimensional computer game using only input from direct brain stimulation — without relying on any usual sensory cues from sight, hearing or touch.

In the game, the subjects had to navigate 21 different mazes, with two choices to move forward or down based on whether they sensed a visual stimulation artifact called a phosphene, which are perceived as blobs or bars of light. To signal which direction to move, the researchers generated a phosphene through transcranial magnetic stimulation, a well-known technique that uses a magnetic coil placed near the skull to directly and noninvasively stimulate a specific area of the brain.

“The way virtual reality is done these days is through displays, headsets and goggles, but ultimately your brain is what creates your reality,” said senior author Rajesh Rao, UW professor of Computer Science & Engineering and director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering.

“The fundamental question we wanted to answer was: Can the brain make use of artificial information that it’s never seen before that is delivered directly to the brain to navigate a virtual world or do useful tasks without other sensory input? And the answer is yes.”

The five test subjects made the right moves in the mazes 92 percent of the time when they received the input via direct brain stimulation, compared to 15 percent of the time when they lacked that guidance.

The absence or presence of phosphenes – visual artifacts that can be created through direct brain stimulation – told the test subjects whether to move forward or down.University of Washington

"The way virtual reality is done these days is through displays, headsets and goggles, but ultimately your brain is what creates your reality."

The simple game demonstrates one way that novel information from artificial sensors or computer-generated virtual worlds can be successfully encoded and delivered noninvasively to the human brain to solve useful tasks. It employs a technology commonly used in neuroscience to study how the brain works — transcranial magnetic stimulation — to instead convey actionable information to the brain.

The test subjects also got better at the navigation task over time, suggesting that they were able to learn to better detect the artificial stimuli.

“We’re essentially trying to give humans a sixth sense,” said lead author Darby Losey, a graduate in computer science and neurobiology who now works as a staff researcher for the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS).  “So much effort in this field of neural engineering has focused on decoding information from the brain. We’re interested in how you can encode information into the brain.”

"These results suggest that humans can learn to utilize information delivered non-invasively to their brains to solve tasks that cannot be solved using their natural senses. Exploring this emerging field of human sensory augmentation, with its technological as well as ethical and social implications, remains an active area of research," conclude the researchers.

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The initial experiment used binary information — whether a phosphene was present or not — to let the game players know whether there was an obstacle in front of them in the maze. In the real world, even that type of simple input could help blind or visually impaired individuals navigate.

“The technology is not there yet — the tool we use to stimulate the brain is a bulky piece of equipment that you wouldn’t carry around with you,” said co-author Andrea Stocco, a UW assistant professor of psychology and I-LABS research scientist. “But eventually we might be able to replace the hardware with something that’s amenable to real world applications.”

The testers successfully navigated an average of 92 percent of the moves when they received input via direct brain stimulation to guide them through the experimental mazes (blue) versus only 15 percent of the steps in the control mazes when they received no such input (red mazes).University of Washington

Together with other partners from outside UW, members of the research team have co-founded Neubay, a startup company aimed at commercializing their ideas and introducing neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques that could make virtual-reality, gaming and other applications better and more engaging.

The team is currently investigating how altering the intensity and location of direct brain stimulation can create more complex visual and other sensory perceptions which are currently difficult to replicate in augmented or virtual reality.

“We look at this as a very small step toward the grander vision of providing rich sensory input to the brain directly and noninvasively,” said Rao. “Over the long term, this could have profound implications for assisting people with sensory deficits while also paving the way for more realistic virtual reality experiences.”

SOURCE  University of Washington

By  33rd Square

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Exponential Technology  

Lately there have been many exciting advancements in human enhancement technology. Here are four with incredible potential.

Technology is improving exponentially, affecting almost every aspect of our daily lives. Over the next few decades, many believe we'll move in a new direction as technical innovations are applied to our own bodies. There is always a demand for new medical procedures, but human advancement is now technological advancement. Here are four developments to follow.

BCI

Brain-computer interfaces appeared in 2008, utilizing head-gear that detects EKG patterns and translates them to electrical signals which can be used to affect devices. Today, there are a number of BCI products on the market. Admittedly, most of them are toys and hard to use consistently, but this is a science in its infancy, and soon we may be able to operate wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, and virtually any apparatus directed by thought alone.

Prosthetics

Engineers have begun producing artificial limbs able to articulate human movement. These are normally powered by batteries and rely on pressure-sensitive switches to react. But the University of North Carolina and others are working to perfect limbs that respond to electrical signals in the wearer's muscles. Vanderbilt University has worked out a system for powering artificial limbs with small rocket motors. As mechanical engineering, BCI, and fuel systems merge and improve, artificial limbs may perform as well as or better than the organic version.

Vision

Advances in eye treatment and lenses may soon bring about a generation that has never worn glasses. For now, though, advancements in eyesight correction allow the nearsighted and farsighted among us to see with ease. According to a specialist from Identity Optical, the Israel-based company Shamir has introduced high-tech lenses utilizing their own patented software for simulating movements of the human eye. The appearance of custom-engineered lenses means practically anyone can sustain excellent vision throughout their lives.

Custom Features

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In 1995, researchers shocked the world by growing a human ear on the back of a lab rat. By 2012, a Boston hospital grew the first fully human ear, by covering a frame with collagen and using a bit of the patient's own cartilage to "seed" the new ear and grow an exact duplicate. While the procedure remains hung up in red tape, it's hoped by many that it will be approved and become common for replacing damaged body parts. As geneticists perfect splicing DNA, growing virtually anything we require may be just a few generations ahead.

These technological developments are all paving the way for human enhancement’s future. For now, though, prosthetic technology and innovations in vision correction are improving human lives every day. While we never know what tomorrow will bring, these technologies suggest a bright future for those interested in human enhancement.

By Emma Sturgis

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About the Author: Emma is a freelance writer from Boston, MA. Information related to the legality of carrying controlled substances without a prescription was provided by a possession of an illegal substance lawyer in Austin, TX. Questions? Say hi on Twitter @EmmaSturgis2

Brain-Computer Interface  

Researchers have designed a better decoder to make sense of electric signals from the brain. Their crucial development has the software compensate for the irregular nature of those neural signals. The innovation has led to the creation of a new high-speed typing system for ALS patients.

A new study describes three software innovations that substantially improved the user experience and performance of the BrainGate brain computer interface (BCI). Researchers said the gains are a significant advance in their ongoing work to develop and test a practical BCI assistive technology that people with paralysis could use easily, reliably, independently, and on demand to regain control over external devices.

The work has been published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Intracortical BCIs such as BrainGate use a tiny array of implanted electrodes to pick up the electrical activity of neurons in the motor cortex of the brain. Computers then translate those signals into digital commands that have allowed users to control electronic devicessuch as computers and robotic arms by simply intending to move their own arm or hand. The translation relies on a decoder, an algorithm that infers the movement intentions of the user from the patterns of their neural activity.

A challenge of decoding movement intention from intracortical electrodes is that the signals change over time — thus, intracortical BCIs have required frequent interruptions for decoder recalibration. Neural signal patterns can change when the electrodes move even slightly; a neuron whose signal was not previously detected can end up joining the recorded ensemble while another might become excluded. As the neural signals shift and drift, the performance of the BCI — the ability of users to move a cursor or robot by thinking about the move — will decline until the decoder can be recalibrated. This recalibration is typically performed using a special task in which the participant tries to move the cursor to prescribed targets so that movement intentions can be mapped to the new neural activity patterns.

The essential advance in the new study is a set of decoder upgrades that allow the algorithm to recalibrate itself during practical BCI use without making the user stop for calibration task every time the signals change. Results of the research reported in the paper show that the new decoder preserved BCI performance much longer than before and even contributed to improving users’ accurate typing speed on an on-screen keyboard. Rather than frequent pauses for recalibration, users could type for hours, pausing only when they wanted to and without the need for technicians to intervene.

"Eliminating the need to run a calibration task whenever the recorded signals change will make a clinical BCI more user-friendly and easy to use."

“Eliminating the need to run a calibration task whenever the recorded signals change will make a clinical BCI more user-friendly and easy to use,” said lead author Beata Jarosiewicz, assistant professor (research) of neuroscience at Brown University and the Brown Institute for Brain Science, and investigator at the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center (PVAMC).

The BrainGate team includes scientists, engineers, and clinicians from Brown, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), PVAMC, Stanford University, and Case Western Reserve University.

A dramatic demonstration at the Stanford site of the clinical trial, a woman who is diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), was able to use BrainGate for six sessions of a few hours each over the course of 42 days without any interruptions for explicit recalibration after the decoder was initialized on the first day. She was able to type paragraphs, pausing and unpausing the BCI on her own, while the decoder calibrated itself.

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“Watching our participants use this more robust system to type on a computer screen highlights the progress being made toward a clinically useful system,” said Dr. Leigh Hochberg, professor of engineering at Brown, director of the Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology at PVAMC, director of the Neurotechnology Trials Unit at MGH Neurology, and senior author of the paper.

“There is still a lot of research to do,” Hochberg said. “With continued clinical research, we will learn how our findings extend to more participants. We want to make the system faster, easier, smaller, fully implanted, more portable, less requiring of an expert researcher or caregiver, and more nimble in its ability to provide control of external devices.

“In these studies, we are making steps toward robust and flexible communication systems for people with severely limited movement, including limited or no speech. We are also dedicated not only to enabling control over computers or robotic assistive devices, but — for people with spinal cord injury or stroke — working toward the goal of reconnecting brain to limb, allowing the powerful intracortical signals to activate fully implanted functional electrical stimulation devices, and re-enabling intuitive movement of one’s own arm and hand.”

Hochberg emphasized, “Our extraordinary research participants are true pioneers. They are participating in the trial not because they hope to gain any personal benefit, but because they want to help us to develop and test a system that will help other people with paralysis in the future.”

SOURCE  Brown University

By 33rd Square

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 Neuroscience  

Neuroscientists have demonstrated the viability of direct — and completely non-invasive — brain-to-brain communication in humans for the first time. The experiment allowed subjects to exchange telepathic words digitally over the internet.

For the first time an international team of neuroscientists and robotics engineers have demonstrated the viability of direct brain-to-brain communication in humans. Recently published in PLOS ONE, in the article "Conscious Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans Using Non-Invasive Technologies" the highly novel findings describe the successful transmission of information via the internet between the intact scalps of two human subjects – located 5,000 miles apart.

"We wanted to find out if one could communicate directly between two people by reading out the brain activity from one person and injecting brain activity into the second person, and do so across great physical distances by leveraging existing communication pathways," explains coauthor Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, Director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.

"We believe these experiments represent an important first step in exploring the feasibility of complementing or bypassing traditional language-based or motor-based communication."

"One such pathway is, of course, the internet, so our question became, 'Could we develop an experiment that would bypass the talking or typing part of internet and establish direct brain-to-brain communication between subjects located far away from each other in India and France?'"

It turned out the answer was "yes."

In the neuroscientific equivalent of instant messaging, Pascual-Leone, together with Giulio Ruffini and Carles Grau leading a team of researchers from Starlab Barcelona, Spain, and Michel Berg, leading a team from Axilum Robotics, Strasbourg, France, successfully transmitted the words "hola" and "ciao" in a computer-mediated brain-to-brain transmission from a location in India to a location in France using internet-linked electroencephalogram (EEG) and robot-assisted and image-guided transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technologies.

Previous studies on EEG-based brain-computer interaction (BCI) have typically made use of communication between a human brain and computer. In these studies, electrodes attached to a person's scalp record electrical currents in the brain as a person realizes an action-thought, such as consciously thinking about moving the arm or leg. The computer then interprets that signal and translates it to a control output, such as a robot or wheelchair.

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But, in this new study, the research team added a second human brain on the other end of the system. Four healthy participants, aged 28 to 50, participated in the study. One of the four subjects was assigned to the brain-computer interface (BCI) branch and was the sender of the words; the other three were assigned to the computer-brain interface (CBI) branch of the experiments and received the messages and had to understand them.

Using EEG, the research team first translated the greetings "hola" and "ciao" into binary code and then emailed the results from India to France. There a computer-brain interface transmitted the message to the receiver's brain through noninvasive brain stimulation. The subjects experienced this as phosphenes, flashes of light in their peripheral vision. The light appeared in numerical sequences that enabled the receiver to decode the information in the message, and while the subjects did not report feeling anything, they did correctly receive the greetings.

A second similar experiment was conducted between individuals in Spain and France, with the end result a total error rate of just 15 percent, 11 percent on the decoding end and five percent on the initial coding side.

"By using advanced precision neuro-technologies including wireless EEG and robotized TMS, we were able to directly and noninvasively transmit a thought from one person to another, without them having to speak or write," says Pascual-Leone. "This in itself is a remarkable step in human communication, but being able to do so across a distance of thousands of miles is a critically important proof-of-principle for the development of brain-to-brain communications. We believe these experiments represent an important first step in exploring the feasibility of complementing or bypassing traditional language-based or motor-based communication."



SOURCE  Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center via EurekAlert

By 33rd Square

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 Brain-To-Brain Interfaces  

Researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a colleague.

University of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher.

Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, Rajesh Rao sent a brain signal to Andrea Stocco on the other side of the UW campus, causing Stocco's finger to move on a keyboard.

While researchers at Duke University have demonstrated brain-to-brain communication between two rats, and Harvard researchers have demonstrated it between a human and a rat, Rao and Stocco believe this is the first demonstration of human-to-human brain interfacing.

"The Internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains," Stocco said. "We want to take the knowledge of a brain and transmit it directly from brain to brain."

The researchers captured the full demonstration on video recorded in both labs. The version available at the end of this story.

Rao, a UW professor of computer science and engineering, has been working on brain-computer interfacing (BCI) in his lab for more than 10 years and just published a textbook, Brain-Computer Interfacing on the subject.

In 2011, spurred by the rapid advances in BCI technology, he believed he could demonstrate the concept of human brain-to-brain interfacing. So he partnered with Stocco, a UW research assistant professor in psychology at the UW's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.

The cycle of the experiment. Brain signals from the “Sender” are recorded. When the computer detects imagined hand movements, a “fire” command is transmitted over the Internet to the TMS machine, which causes an upward movement of the right hand of the “Receiver.” This usually results in the “fire” key being hit.

Image Souce: University of Washington

On Aug. 12, Rao sat in his lab wearing a cap with electrodes hooked up to an electroencephalography machine, which reads electrical activity in the brain. Stocco was in his lab across campus wearing a purple swim cap marked with the stimulation site for the transcranial magnetic stimulation coil that was placed directly over his left motor cortex, which controls hand movement.

The team had a Skype connection set up so the two labs could coordinate, though neither Rao nor Stocco could see the Skype screens.

Rao looked at a computer screen and played a simple video game with his mind. When he was supposed to fire a cannon at a target, he imagined moving his right hand (being careful not to actually move his hand), causing a cursor to hit the "fire" button. Almost instantaneously, Stocco, who wore noise-canceling earbuds and wasn't looking at a computer screen, involuntarily moved his right index finger to push the space bar on the keyboard in front of him, as if firing the cannon. Stocco compared the feeling of his hand moving involuntarily to that of a nervous tic.

"It was both exciting and eerie to watch an imagined action from my brain get translated into actual action by another brain," Rao said. "This was basically a one-way flow of information from my brain to his. The next step is having a more equitable two-way conversation directly between the two brains."

The technologies used by the researchers for recording and stimulating the brain are both well-known. Electroencephalography, or EEG, is routinely used by clinicians and researchers to record brain activity noninvasively from the scalp. Transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, is a noninvasive way of delivering stimulation to the brain to elicit a response. Its effect depends on where the coil is placed; in this case, it was placed directly over the brain region that controls a person's right hand. By activating these neurons, the stimulation convinced the brain that it needed to move the right hand.

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Computer science and engineering undergraduates Matthew Bryan, Bryan Djunaedi, Joseph Wu and Alex Dadgar, along with bioengineering graduate student Dev Sarma, wrote the computer code for the project, translating Rao's brain signals into a command for Stocco's brain.

"Brain-computer interface is something people have been talking about for a long, long time," said Chantel Prat, assistant professor in psychology at the UW's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, and Stocco's wife and research partner who helped conduct the experiment. "We plugged a brain into the most complex computer anyone has ever studied, and that is another brain."

At first blush, this breakthrough brings to mind all kinds of science fiction scenarios. Stocco jokingly referred to it as a "Vulcan mind meld." But Rao cautioned this technology only reads certain kinds of simple brain signals, not a person's thoughts. And it doesn't give anyone the ability to control your actions against your will.

Both researchers were in the lab wearing highly specialized equipment and under ideal conditions. They also had to obtain and follow a stringent set of international human-subject testing rules to conduct the demonstration.

"I think some people will be unnerved by this because they will overestimate the technology," Prat said. "There's no possible way the technology that we have could be used on a person unknowingly or without their willing participation."

Rao and Stocco next plan to conduct an experiment that would transmit more complex information from one brain to the other. If that works, they then will conduct the experiment on a larger pool of subjects.




SOURCE  University of Washington

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 Brain-Computer Interfaces  

University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that when humans use this technology – called a brain-computer interface – the brain behaves much like it does when completing simple motor skills such as kicking a ball, typing or waving a hand. Learning to control a robotic arm or a prosthetic limb could become second nature for people who are paralyzed.

Small electrodes placed on or inside the brain allow patients to interact with computers or control robotic limbs simply by thinking about how to execute those actions. This technology could improve communication and daily life for a person who is paralyzed or has lost the ability to speak from a stroke or neurodegenerative disease.

Now, University of Washington researchers have demonstrated that when humans use this technology – called a brain-computer interface – the brain behaves much like it does when completing simple motor skills such as kicking a ball, typing or waving a hand. Learning to control a robotic arm or a prosthetic limb could become second nature for people who are paralyzed.

“What we’re seeing is that practice makes perfect with these tasks,” said Rajesh Rao, a UW professor of computer science and engineering and a senior researcher involved in the study. “There’s a lot of engagement of the brain’s cognitive resources at the very beginning, but as you get better at the task, those resources aren’t needed anymore and the brain is freed up.”

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Rao and UW collaborators Jeffrey Ojemann, a professor of neurological surgery, andJeremiah Wander, a doctoral student in bioengineering, published their results online June 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In this study, seven people with severe epilepsy were hospitalized for a monitoring procedure that tries to identify where in the brain seizures originate. Physicians cut through the scalp, drilled into the skull and placed a thin sheet of electrodes directly on top of the brain. While they were watching for seizure signals, the researchers also conducted this study.

The patients were asked to move a mouse cursor on a computer screen by using only their thoughts to control the cursor’s movement. Electrodes on their brains picked up the signals directing the cursor to move, sending them to an amplifier and then a laptop to be analyzed. Within 40 milliseconds, the computer calculated the intentions transmitted through the signal and updated the movement of the cursor on the screen.

Researchers found that when patients started the task, a lot of brain activity was centered in the prefrontal cortex, an area associated with learning a new skill. But after often as little as 10 minutes, frontal brain activity lessened, and the brain signals transitioned to patterns similar to those seen during more automatic actions.

“Now we have a brain marker that shows a patient has actually learned a task,” Ojemann said. “Once the signal has turned off, you can assume the person has learned it.”

While researchers have demonstrated success in using brain-computer interfaces in monkeys and humans, this is the first study that clearly maps the neurological signals throughout the brain. The researchers were surprised at how many parts of the brain were involved.

“We now have a larger-scale view of what’s happening in the brain of a subject as he or she is learning a task,” Rao said. “The surprising result is that even though only a very localized population of cells is used in the brain-computer interface, the brain recruits many other areas that aren’t directly involved to get the job done.”

Several types of brain-computer interfaces are being developed and tested. The least invasive is a device placed on a person’s head that can detect weak electrical signatures of brain activity. Basic commercial gaming products are on the market, but this technology isn’t very reliable yet because signals from eye blinking and other muscle movements interfere too much.

A more invasive alternative is to surgically place electrodes inside the brain tissue itself to record the activity of individual neurons. Researchers at Brown University and the University of Pittsburghhave demonstrated this in humans as patients, unable to move their arms or legs, have learned to control robotic arms using the signal directly from their brain.

The UW team tested electrodes on the surface of the brain, underneath the skull. This allows researchers to record brain signals at higher frequencies and with less interference than measurements from the scalp. A future wireless device could be built to remain inside a person’s head for a longer time to be able to control computer cursors or robotic limbs at home.

“This is one push as to how we can improve the devices and make them more useful to people,” Wander said. “If we have an understanding of how someone learns to use these devices, we can build them to respond accordingly.”


SOURCE  University of Washington

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 Brain-Machine Interface  

In a jaw-dropping feat of engineering, electronics turn a person's thoughts into commands for a robot. Using a brain-computer interface technology pioneered by University of Minnesota biomedical engineering professor Bin He, several young people have learned to use their thoughts to steer a flying robot around a gym, making it turn, rise, dip, and even sail through a ring.

At the University of Minnesota, a new technology is turning science fiction into reality. In the lab of biomedical engineering professor Bin He, several young people have learned to use their thoughts to steer a flying robot around a gym, making it turn, rise, dip, and even sail through a ring.

The technology, pioneered by He, may someday allow people robbed of speech and mobility by neurodegenerative diseases to regain function by controlling artificial limbs, wheelchairs, or other devices. And it's completely noninvasive: Brain waves (EEG) are picked up by the electrodes of an EEG cap on the scalp, not a chip implanted in the brain.

A report on the technology has been published in the Journal of Neural Engineering.

"My entire career is to push for noninvasive 3D brain-computer interfaces, or BCI," says He, a faculty member in the College of Science and Engineering. "[Researchers elsewhere] have used a chip implanted into the brain's motor cortex to drive movement of a cursor [across a screen] or a robotic arm. But here we have proof that a noninvasive BCI from a scalp EEG can do as well as an invasive chip."

Mapping the brain 

He's BCI system works thanks to the geography of the motor cortex—the area of the cerebrum that governs movement. When we move, or think about a movement, neurons in the motor cortex produce tiny electric currents. Thinking about a different movement activates a new assortment of neurons.

Sorting out these assortments laid the groundwork for the BCI, says He.

"We were the first to use both functional MRI and EEG imaging to map where in the brain neurons are activated when you imagine movements," he says. "So now we know where the signals will come from."

The brain map showed that imagining making fists—with one hand or the other or both—produced the most easily distinguished signals.

"This knowledge about what kinds of signals are generated by what kind of motion imagination helps us optimize the design of the system to control flying objects in real time," He explains.

Image Source: Journal of Neural Engineering / He

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Monitoring electrical activity from the brain, the 64 scalp electrodes of the EEG cap report the signals (or lack of signals) they detect to a computer, which translates the pattern into an electronic command. Volunteers first learned to use thoughts to control the 1D movement of a cursor on a screen, then 2D cursor movements and 3D control of a virtual helicopter.

Now it's the real deal, controlling an actual flying robot—formally, an AR [augmented reality] drone. He's computers interface with the WiFi controls that come with the robot; after translating EEG brain signals into a command, the computer sends the command to the robot by WiFi.

The journal article describes how five men and women learned to guide the flying robot. The first author is Karl LaFleur, who was a senior biomedical engineering student during the study.

"Working for Dr. He has been a phenomenal experience," says LaFleur, who plans to put his knowledge to use when he enters the U's Medical School next year. "He has so much experience with the scientific process, and he is excellent at helping his students learn this process while allowing them room for independent work. Being an author on a first-person journal article is a huge opportunity that most undergraduates never get."

"I think the potential for BCI is very broad," says He. "Next, we want to apply the flying robot technology to help disabled patients interact with the world.

"It may even help patients with conditions like stroke or Alzheimer's disease. We're now studying some stroke patients to see if it'll help rewire brain circuits to bypass damaged areas."



SOURCE  University of Minnesota 

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