The History of Brain Computer Interface (BCI)
How about the brain computer interface early day?
A. Bioelectricity
(Animal electricity):
The 18th-century Italian physician, physicist, biologist, and philosopher
Luigi Glvani published classical studies that are several seminal works
stimulating muscle contractions using Leyden jars and discovered “animal electricity” that applying an electric
spark to a dead frog’s legs would cause them to twitch in 1791 and 1794.
What is Leyden jars?
Leyden jars (or Leiden jars) are antique electrical components which are originally used to stores a high-voltage electric charge between electrical
conductors on the inside and outside of a glass jar.
B. ElectroEncephaloGraphy
(EEG):
Hans Berger, a German neuroscientist, invented the electrical activity of
the human brain with ElectroEncephaloGraphy (EEG) in 1924.
C.
William House invented a cochlear implant in 1961.
In 1964, Blair Simmons and Robert J. White implanted a single-channel electrode
in a patient's cochlea at Stanford University.
D.
Spanish professor of neurophysiology at Yale
University, José Delgado, who stopped a charging bull in its tracks using a
brain implant in 1965.
E.
Professor Eberhard Fetz who helped launch modern
efforts in BCI exploration by testing whether a monkey could control the needle
on a meter by using only its mind. His overall research has concerned the
neural control of limb movement in primates. This began with studies of
monkeys’ ability to volitionally control the activity of brain cells. In this
operant conditioning paradigm monkeys controlled a biofeedback meter arm with
patterns of activity in motor cortex neurons. This work in 1969 first showed
that neural activity could be used to drive an external device, and
demonstrated the ability of the brain to volitionally control the activity of
cortical neurons in variable patterns, phenomena that underlie much of the
current work in brain-machine interfaces.
F.
In the 1980s, Apostolos Georgopoulos at Johns
Hopkins University found a mathematical relationship between the electrical
responses of single motor cortex neurons in rhesus macaque monkeys and the
direction in which they moved their arms (based on a cosine function). He also
found that dispersed groups of neurons, in different areas of the monkey's
brains, collectively controlled motor commands, but was able to record the
firings of neurons in only one area at a time, because of the technical
limitations imposed by his equipment.
History of Brain Computer Interface:
·
1924: Discovery of the electrical activity of
the human brain with ElectroEncephaloGraphy (EEG) by Hans Berger, a German
neuroscientist.
·
1950s: First Wet-Brain Implants by Jose Delgado.
He implanted electrodes into the brains of live animals and human, and
stimulating them using a stimoceiver, a radio receiver, planted underneath the
skull, to produce calm or aggressive behavioural effects.
· 1964：Walter et al. showed that a single click elicits a brief positive peak and a brief negative peak. Repetitive flashes elicit brief positive and negative peaks. If these stimuli are separated by 1 sec the same individual patterns result. After around 50 presentations, these peaks are indistinguishable from noise. On the other hand, when a single click is followed by the repetitive flashes which are terminated by a button press, there is a large gradual negative peak which ends sharply with the button press. This is the contingent negative variation.
·
1968: Magnetoencephalography (MEG) signal
measured by Daid Cohen.
·
1970: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) of USA begins a program to explore brain communications using ElectroEncephaloGraphy
(EEG).
·
1973：Based
on the “Contingent
Negative Variation (CNV)”,
Jacques Vidal wrote the new paper “Control
of external objects using EEG” that
had been introduced to illustrate the potential of utilising human brain
activity to interact with computers measured by EEG.
· 1978: The world’s first modern multi-channel Cochlear implant by Graeme Clark in Australia. As of 2016, approximately 600,000 people worldwide had received cochlear implants.
·
1976: First Evidence that Brain Computer
Interface (BCI) can be used for communication by the professor Jacuques J.
Vidal the who coined the term BCI in 1972, from The University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA)'s BCI Laboratory. The single trial visual evoked potentials
could be used as a communication channel effective enough to control a cursor
through a two-dimensional maze.
·
1978: First brain computer interface (BCI) to
Aid the Blind (visual prosthesis, vision prosthesis, bionic eye). The first
useful artificial eye is now helping a blind man walk safely around and read
large letters. The artificial vision system works by taking an image from
miniature camera and distance information from an ultrasound sensor, each of
which is mounted on one lens of a pair of sunglasses. These signals are
processed by a 5 kg portable computer and then a new signal is sent to 68
platinum electrodes implanted in the person's brain. The electrodes are on the
surface of the brain's visual cortex and stimulate the person to visualize the
phosphenes, specks of lights that show the edges of objects.
·
1980s: EEG recordings in Macaque Monkey invasive
electrocorticography or epidural recordings over a limited brain area.
·
1988:
o
Stevo Bozinovski wrote a report on noninvasive
EEG control of a physical object, a robot. The experiment described was EEG
control of multiple start-stop-restart of the robot movement, along an
arbitrary trajectory defined by a line drawn on a floor.
o
Various types of EEG signals may be used for object
control and a taxonomy of EEG signals was introduced which divided EEG signals
into both spontaneous and event related, the latter being divided into both
evoked and anticipatory, the latter being divided into both preparatory (e.g.,
readiness potential) and expectatory (e.g., contingent negative variation
potential, or CNV). If spontaneous EEG is used, usually a frequency band is
observed. Often the alpha band (8-13Hz) is used and its intentional change can
be named Contingent Alpha Variation (CαV), motivated by the name for the CNV
potential given in.
·
1990: An extension of the classical CNV paradigm
is defined using a closed-loop design, bidirectional adaptive BCI controlling
computer buzzer by an anticipatory brain potential. A new electrocognitive
phenomenon from the human brain is observed by Bozinovski, denoted as
electroexpectogram (EXG).
·
1998: First brain computer interface object
(invasive, non-EEG) was implanted into human being that produce high quality
signals by researcher Philip Kennedy. He also invented wireless di-electrode
for operation in the brain, e.g. neurotrophic electrode, that is an
intracortical device designed to read the electrical signals that the rain uses
to process information.
·
1999:
o
Decoded Cat’s Brain Signals by scientists at the
University of California, Berkely. i.e. The signals have been recorded from
deep in the brain of a cat to capture movies of how it views the world around
it.
o
BCI is used
64-electrode EEG skullcap to aid a quadriplegic for limited hand movement by
Hunter Peckham at Case Western Reserve University.
o
The first International Brain Computer Interface
(IBCI) Meeting was held in 1999, with 50 scientists from 22 laboratories
attending.
·
2000: BCI Experiments with Owl Monkey. BCI
reproduced owl monkey movements while the monkey operated a joystick or reached
for food. The BCI operated in real time and could also control a separate robot
remotely over Internet protocol. It was called open-loop BCI, because the
monkeys could not see the arm moving and did not receive any feedback.
·
2002: The monkeys were trained to play a pinball
game where they were rewarded by quickly and accurately moving the cursor to
meet a red target dot. BCI implanted monkeys were trained to move a cursor on a
computer screen by researchers at Brown University, led by John Donoghue.
Around 100 micro-electrodes were used to tap up to 30 neurons, but because the
electrodes targeted neurons that controlled movement, only three minutes of
data were needed to create a model that could interpret the brain signals as
specific movements.
·
2003: The bio-tech company Cyberkinetics in
conjunction with the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University developed
the first BCI game called as BrainGate that is a brain implant system. First
human brain successfully implanted very sensitive sensors with a BCI. This
project aims to improve the accuracy when capturing neural signals as the
previous ways of measuring signals (traditionally measured externally on human
head) as the traditional methods are not sufficiently precise due to refraction
of brain signals refracted on human skull.
·
2005:
o
First Tetraplegic, Matt Nagle, BrainGate used
BCI to control an artificial hand as part of the first nine-month human trial
of Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology’s BrainGate chip-implant. The 96-electrodes
BrainGate were implanted in Nagle’s right precentral gyrus (area of the motor
cortex for arm movement) for allowing Nagle to control a robotic arm by
thinking about moving his hand as well as a computer cursor, lights and TV.
o
Monkey brain controlled robotic arm at the
annual meeting of American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
The monkey’s real arms are restrained in plastic tubes. To control the robotic
arm, 96 electrodes–each thinner than a human hair–are attached to the monkey’s
motor cortex, a region of the brain responsible for voluntary movement.
o
IBM Blue Brain Project that is an attempt to
reverse-engineer the brain launched by the École polytechnique fédérale de
Lausanne (EPFL). The researchers of the Swiss-based Blue Brain Project have
created a virtual pack of neurons that acts just like the real thing, and hope
to get an e-brain up and running.
o
A high accuracy BCI controlled wheel chair was
developed in Japan.
·
2008:
o
Voiceless phone calls are demonstrated (The
Audeo – TI developers conference). The Audeo is being developed to create a
human–computer interface for communication without the need of physical motor
control or speech production. Using signal processing, unpronounced speech
representing the thought of the mind can be translated from intercepted
neurological signals.
o
Research developed in the Advanced
Telecommunications Research (ATR) Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in
Kyoto, Japan allowed the scientists to reconstruct images directly from the
brain and display them on a computer.
o
First consumer off-the-shelf, mass market game
input device. High Accuracy BCI Wheelchair Developed in Japan.
o
Numenta founded to replicate human neocortex
ability.
·
2009:
o
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA)’s “Silent Talk” program that funding by the Pentagon awarded grants to
Brain-Wave research to “allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield
without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals,” an application
that could greatly facilitate covert communication. An external analysis
highlights the potential use of BCI technology to develop shared consciousness
within and across units, improve collective awareness of combat challenges, and
provide combatants with insights into perspectives and internal deliberations
of multiple operators. The Silent Talk would allow soldiers to communicate via
brain waves. The project has three major goals, according to DARPA. First, try
to map a person’s EEG patterns to his or her individual words. Then, see if
those patterns are generalizable — if everyone has similar patterns. Last,
“construct a fieldable pre-prototype that would decode the signal and transmit
over a limited range.”
o
A Spanish Company, Starlab, developed a wearable
biometry system based on a 4-channel, wireless, all-digital eletroophysiology
(eg: EEG/EOG/EMG) recording system called ENOBIO. Designed for research
purposes the system
o
provides a platform for application development.
Different applications can be built on the ENOBIO system. ENOBIO has presented
a biometric application, a Human Machine Interface and a Sleepiness prediction
system.
o
Brain Port is a device that has a sixth sense
for the blind, translating images from a video camera to electrical impulses
that are transmitted via the tongue to the brain of a blind person. Brain Port
is developed by neuroscientists at Middleton, Wisc.–based Wicab, Inc. (a
company cofounded
o
by the late Back-y-Rita). The Brain Port used
the technique called echolocation that is the strangest gadget for the blind of
them all, translating visual images into electrical impulses, sent to a plate
that rests on the tongue., uses reflected sound to help subjects
"see"
o
their surroundings by measuring the distance,
size, and
o
density of the objects around them, it is
reported. Visual data are collected through a small digital video camera about
1.5 centimeters in diameter thatsits in the center of a pair of sunglasses worn
by the user.
o
the University of Wiscons in Department of Biomedical
Engineering has created a system that
allows a person to tweet with only a thought.
It’s not a bid to help mankind become even lazier (its intended use is
for people with disabilities), but it certainly is one step closer to
telepathy. The system works by displaying a keyboard on a screen. The rows and columns are constantly blinking,
periodically turning the desired letter blue.
The user wears a hat covered with electrodes and, as a specific letter
is focused upon, the hat detects when the brain responds to the color
change. Although relatively slow, with
experienced users averaging about ten characters per minute, this technology
could do a world of good for people who have normal brain functions but whose
bodies are immobile.
o
Scientists at Honda Research Institute unveiled
the invention by wearing the helmet only had to think about making movement, to
move the arms and legs of an Asimo humanoid robot. Its inventors hope that
oneday the mind-control techonology will allow people to do things such as turn
air conditioning on or off, open the car boot without putting the shopping
down, ...
o
Lisa Zyga explained the details of the system
that can turn brain waves into FM radio signals and decode them into sound.
o
Dr. Chris James experiment had one person using
BCI to transmit thoughts translated as series of binary digits, over the
internet to another person whose computer receives the digits and transmits
them to the second user'sbrain through flashing an LED.
·
2010: The
Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) X PRIZE will reward nothing less than a team
that provides vision to the blind, new bodies to disabled people, and perhaps
even a geographical From 1994 to 2020,
the XPRIZE Foundation has designed and operated seventeen competitions in the
domain areas of Space, Oceans, Learning, Health, Energy, Environment,
Transportation, Safety and Robotics. The X PRIZE Foundation is a non-profit
organization whose mission is to foster innovation through competition. On
October 4, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation captured the world’s attention when
they awarded the largest prize in history, the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE, to
Scaled Composites for their craft SpaceShipOne – the first privately built
spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometres above the earth’s
surface, twice within two weeks.
·
2011:
o
02-01-2011:
The first thought controlled social media network is utilized by the NeuroSky.
o
01-02-2011: The world’s first dual-headed fMRI
scanner was developed by Ray Lee, technical director of the Princeton Neuroscience
Institute. The new design allows an MRI machine to scan two brains at once
potentially paying, the way to future research on how different brains respond
to stimuli and to each other.
o
09-02-2011: A brand new wireless brain-reading
headset that is a brain-controlled, upper-extremity prosthetic debuts at the
Medical Design and Manufacturing conference and exhibition in Anaheim,
California. It will serve as a pilot for the program.
o
06-03-2011:
MyndPlay reheats the old idea of making videos more interactive and for
that purpose it brings brain-computer interfaces to movie making. MyndPlay
allows the viewer to control movies using nothing but their emotions and will.
MyndPlay gives the user the ability to influence, interact with and direct the
plot and outcome of a video or movie using only their minds (more specifically
using brainwaves relative to relaxation and attention states). MyndPlay scans
the mental states of the audience and adjust the scene outcome to fit the
audience mood. July 28-31st in California, the 7th Annual Topanga Film Festival
(TFF) premieres MyndPlay, the world’s first mind ontrolled video and movie
platform.
o
23-03-2011: Indian Scientists working on
Brain-Controlled Robot to help paralytic people composed the music with
brainwaves.
o
13-4-2011: German was allowed driving “thought
controlled car” on the sabbut.
o
28-04-2011: Using brainwaves explore the
communication of word and letter combinations was created by Nick Johnston, a
Grade 10 Semiahmoo Secondary student. It allowed people to communicate without
speaking.
o
28-06-2011: Minimally invasive and low power
BioBolt brain implant converts thoughts into movement.
o
02-09-2011: China, Haier Group presented the
world’s first BCI cloud smart TV powered by NeuroSky will be available for
demonstration at the IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung Berlin) Messe Berlin
Conference.
o
15-11-2011: The world’s first video of the
female brain as it approaches, experiences and recovers during orgasm captured
by fMRI.
o
15-11-2011: Advancer Technologies has developed
a plug-in-play USB device, “USB Biofeedback Game Controller” that harnesses the
power of electromyography (EMG), a technique for evaluating and recording the electrical
activity produced by skeletal muscles, to allow players to directly control
computer games with their muscles. At the core of the controller is the
powerful low-cost Arduino UNO microcontroller, a favourite among hobbyist and
students, acting as a Human Interface Device (HID) keyboard interface. Arduino
is an open-source platform used for building electronics projects. Arduino
consists of both a physical programmable circuit board (often referred to as a
microcontroller) and a piece of software, or IDE (Integrated Development
Environment) that runs on the computer, uses a simplified version of C++ to
write and upload computer code to the physical board. The Arduino Uno is a
microcontroller board based on the ATmega328 processor.
·
2012:
o
Between 2012 and 2013, researchers at the
University of California, Irvine demonstrated for the first time that it is
possible to use BCI technology to restore brain-controlled walking after spinal
cord injury. In their spinal cord injury research study, a person with
paraplegia was able to operate a BCI-robotic gait orthosis to regain basic
brain-controlled ambulation.
o
11-28-2012: The world's first implantable
robotic arm controlled by thoughts is being developed by Chalmers University of
Technology researcher Max Ortiz Catalan. The artificial hand can mimic a living
hand. The motors in each finger can be controlled individually and
simultaneously, e.g. with a turning motion of the wrist.
·
2013:
o
22-02-2013: World premiere of muscle and nerve
of an amputee directly controlled an arm prosthesis, i.e. neuromuscular
electrodes have been permanently implanted in an amputee, it allows natural
control of an advanced robotic prosthesis, similarly to the motions of natural
limb.
o
09-05-2013: Neurobiologists at the University of
Chicago have made tremendous advances toward building lifelike prosthetic limbs
that move and function like the real thing. In real time, scientists have shown
how an organism can sense a tactile stimulus, through an artificial sensor for
the first time.
o
15-05-2013: The world's first brain training
device has developed by researchers of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to reconnect
brain and paralyzed limb after stroke. This novel device which can detect
brainwave, and control the movement of paralyzed limbs, or go even further to
control a robotic hand based on its sophisticated algorithm.
o
27-08-2013: The first non-invasive
human-to-human brain interface has been performed by University of Washington.
Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, one
researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand
motions of a fellow researcher, it likes human brain-to-brain interfacing.
·
2014:
o
06-03-2014: Professor Gil Weinberg, founding
director of the Georgia Institute of Technology, has created a robot that can
be attached to amputees, allowing its technology to be embedded into humans.
The robotic drumming prosthesis has motors that power two drumsticks. The first
stick is controlled both physically by the musicians' arms and electronically
using electromyography (EMG) muscle sensors. The second drumstick
"listens" to the music being played and improvises.
o
25-06-2014: Researchers in the Ohio State
University Wexner Medical Center have developed a new device that made a
paralyzed man to be able to move his fingers and hand with his own thoughts.
The new technology used Neurobridge, an electronic neural bypass for spinal
cord injuries that reconnects the brain directly to muscles, allowing voluntary
and functional control of a paralyzed limb.
·
2015:
o
02-02-2015: Researchers at the University of
Missouri-Columbia have determined how the brain controls robotic grasping
tools. Grasping an object involves a complex network of brain functions. First,
visual cues are processed in specialized areas of the brain. Then, other areas
of the brain use these signals to control the hands to reach for and manipulate
the desired object.
o
21-05-2015: Neural prosthetic devices implanted
in the brain's movement centre, the motor cortex, can allow patients with
paralysis to directly control robotic arm using thoughts alone.
o
21-10-2015: Researchers at University of Royal
Holloway London have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and
machine learning algorithms to predict participants' movements just by
analysing their brain activity.
·
2016：
o
18-07-2016: Researchers at the University of
Warwick have defined and measured human intelligence for the first time ever.
More accurate understanding of human intelligence could lead to future
developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and have implications for a deeper
understanding of another largely misunderstood field: mental health.
o
03-11-2016: For the first time ever, researchers
at the Carnegie Mellon University have found that different languages have
similar neural signatures for describing events and scenes, when the brain
"reads" or decodes a sentence in English or Portuguese, its neural
activation patterns are the same.
·
2017:
o
20-02-2017: A new organic artificial version of
a synapse made by Stanford University researchers. It mimics the brain's
efficient and high performance, low-energy neural learning process, the gap
across which neurotransmitters travel to communicate between neurons.
o
27-03-2017: NeuralLinks that a company working
on BCI under the administration of Elon Musk, has developed the first
implantable BCI device with the ultimate goal of transferring human memory and
thoughts to machine, i.e. Implantable brain-machine interfaces (BMIs).
o
25-04-2017: A new technique, click-on robotic
arm has been received the first patient in the Netherlands. This prosthesis can
be controlled by the patient's own thought. Through an opening in the skin,
this robotic arm is clicked directly onto a metal rod in the bone. Because the
click-on robotic arm connects directly to the skeleton, a prosthesis socket is
no longer necessary. This ensures that it does not slip off, avoids skin
problems, and makes it very easy to put on and take off.
o
17-08-2017: For the first time, The Washington
State University researchers have developed a computer algorithm that is nearly
as accurate as people are at mapping brain neural networks, a breakthrough that
could speed up the image analysis that can be used to improve understanding of
human brain circuitry.
o
23-08-2017: Researchers from the University of Houston
have demonstrate that a brain-computer interface can promote and enhance
cortical involvement during walking, for the first time, suggesting the
protocol may help patients recover the ability to walk after stroke, some
spinal cord injuries and certain other gait disabilities. Scientists can use
non-invasive brain monitoring to determine what parts of the brain are involved
in an activity, using that information to create an algorithm, or a
brain-machine interface, which can translate the subject's intentions into
action. Through reading electroencephalogram (EEG) of brain activity can
distinguish whether a subject is standing still or walking and using brain
computer interface augmented with a virtual walking avatar can help people with
gait disabilities.
·
2018:
o
02-02-018: Scientists from D'Or Institute for
Research and Education (IDOR), used a Magnetic Resonance (MR) machine to read
participants' brain activity and find out what song they were listening
to. The study provided alternatives to
understand neural functioning and interact with it using artificial
intelligence and improved reconstruction of auditory imagination and inner
speech.
o
19-03-2018: Researchers at Lund University in
Sweden, have developed a new method that makes it possible to recode neural
signals into a format that computer processors can use instantly. They can simultaneously collect data from
over one million nerve cells, analyse the information and provide feedback
within a few milliseconds.
o
04-05-2018: Researchers from University of
Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, developed a process allowing them to
specifically label ependymal cells within the adult brain, while avoiding
astrocyte stem cells. The study not only clarifies the identify of adult neural
stem cell ,it also provides a new model to study the function of ependymal
cells and their role in maintaining normal brain function.
o
29-05-2018: Using the open-source software The
Virtual brain, scientists have simulated neural activity based on the unique
structural architecture of individual brain tumour patients. The researchers showed
that individualized models can accurately predict the effects of the tumours on
brain connectivity. The findings are a
first step toward creating personalized brain models that could improve
surgical planning and outcomes.
o
25-12-2018: Researchers applied a machine
learning technique that could use brain activity to predict fear of pain. This
technique could potentially translate patterns of activity in fear-processing
brain regions into scores on questionnaires used to assess a patient's fear of
pain.
o
26-09-2018:
By unlocking new information about how the brain encodes speech,
researchers at North western University found the brain controls speech in a
similar way to how it controls arm movements. By developing a brain machine
interface to decode the commands the brain is sending to the tongue, palate,
lips and larynx, scientists want to help completely paralyzed people like
Stephen Hawking individuals communicate again.
·
2019:
o
24-01-2019: A new technology was developed by the Graphene Flagship,
graphene-based implant can record electrical activity in the brain at extremely
low frequencies and over large areas, unlocking the wealth of information found
below 0.1 Hz, while paving the way for future brain-computer interfaces. Researchers
have been using electrode arrays to record the brain's electrical activity for
decades, mapping activity in different brain regions to understand what it
looks like when everything is working, and what is happening when it is not.
Until now, however, these arrays have only been able to detect activity over a
certain frequency threshold.
o
28-02-2019: The first time, Charité -
Universitätsmedizin Berlin researchers succeeded in measuring increase in the
brain activity before a person decides to launch themselves off a bridge for a
bungee jump. This findings will help advance the development of brain-computer
interfaces, devices that can help quadriplegics control neuroprosthetics which
allow them to regain the use of their hands.
o
28-04-2019: Freddie Cook who was 8 years old boy
became the world's Youngest person with Bionic "hero arm".
o
10-06-2019: Tohoku University researchers have
created fluxtronics devices which are promising for future energy-efficient and
adoptive computing systems, as they behave like neurons and synapses in the
human brain. The human brain, by contrast, operates under very limited power
and is capable of executing complex tasks efficiently using an architecture
that is vastly different from digital computers.
o
19-06-2019: Using a non-invasive brain-computer
interface (BCI), Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed the
first-ever successful mind-controlled robotic arm without brain implants
exhibiting the ability to continuously track and follow a computer cursor.
o
24-06-2019: Understanding brain activity, using
complex statistical methods and fast measurement techniques, researchers found
simple activity engages a set of brain regions that must interact with each
other to produce the behavior quickly and accurately as the brain network comes
up with the right word and enables us to say it.
o
16-07-2019: Royal Melbourne Institute of
Technology (RMIT) University Researchers have mimicked the human brain with an
electronic chip that uses light to create and modify memories. This device
emerge tool in biotechnology and optogenetics to replicate the way the brain
stores and loses information.
o
05-08-2019: A team of scientists in Korea and
the United States have developed a device that can control neural circuits
using a tiny brain implant controlled by a smartphone. The device could speed up efforts to uncover
brain diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, addiction, depression, and
pain.
o
29-08-2019: In the journal Cell Stem Cell,
scientists have produced miniature brains from stem cells that developed
functional neural networks. Despite being a million times smaller than human
brains, these lab-grown brains are the first observed to create brain waves
that resemble those of preterm babies.
o
11-09-2019: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
(EPFL) scientists have successfully developed new neuroprosthetic technology
that combines individual finger control and automation for improved grasping
and manipulation. This technology merges two concepts from two different
fields. It also can be used in several neuroprosthetic applications such as
bionic hand prostheses and brain-to-machine interfaces, increasing the clinical
impact and usability of these devices.
o
18-09-2019: A new type of electroencephalogram
(EEG) electrode that can controll electronic devices with brain waves, without
the sticky gel required for conventional electrodes. Even better, the devices
work through a full head of hair. In the ACS journal Nano Letters, the
researchers report the flexible electrodes, which could someday be used in
brain-computer interfaces to drive cars or move artificial limbs.
o
20-09-2019: Synchron Inc achieves first
successful human implantation of brain computer interface that is an
investigational hands-free operating system. This is the first clinical
feasibility trial evaluating this technology for its potential to restore
communication in people with severe paralysis.
o
Nine of artificial synapses of Stanford
University was assembled together in an array, showing that they could be
simultaneously programmed to mimic the parallel operation of the brain.
·
2020:
o
04-03-2020： University of Michigan researchers developed a way to tame
temperamental nerve endings, separate thick nerve bundles into smaller fibers
that enable more precise control, and amplify the signals coming through those
nerves to enable real-time, intuitive, finger-level control of a robotic hand.
o
08-04-2020: A team of researchers led by
Jonathan Viventi, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke
University has published paper about next-generation brain implants an
ultrathin, flexible neural interface with more than a thousand electrodes can
survive for more than six years in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
o
27-5-2020: Smart electronic glasses (e-glasses)
are devices that measure electrical signals from the brain
(electroencephalogram; EEG) or eyes (electrooculogram; EOG) can help diagnose
conditions like epilepsy and sleep disorders, as well as control computers in
human-machine interfaces. But obtaining these measurements requires a steady
physical contact between skin and sensor, which is difficult with rigid
devices. Smart electronic glasses that not only monitor a person's brain waves
and body movements, but also can function as sunglasses and allow users to
control a video game with eye motions. It has been reported in ACS applied
materials & Interfaces by American chemical society researchers.
o
15-06-2020: In Nature Materials, Stanford University
researchers have tested the first biohybrid version of artificial synapse that
is neuron-like cells and demonstrated that it can communicate with living
cells. Future technologies stemming from this device could function by
responding directly to chemical signals from the brain.
o
17-06-2020: Brainsourcing is a technique, using
electroencephalograms with the help of artificial intelligence, to analyze
opinions and draw conclusions making it possible to determine the preferences
of large groups of people from just the brain activity. Brainsourcing can be
used to classify images or recommend content, and so on.
o
27-07-2020: University of Michigan researchers
have discovered meaningful signal in grey matter noise. By tuning into a subset
of brain waves, the power requirement of neural interfaces while improving
their accuracy have been reduced 90%. It could lead to long-lasting brain
implant that both treat neurological diseases and enable mind-controlled
prosthetics and machines.
o
17-8-2020: By recording the activity of separate
populations of neurons simultaneously, Biomedical Engineering's Matthew Smith
and Byron Yu, along with former Ph.D. student Ben Cowley have gained the neural
basis through which internal states in the brain affect decision-making over an
extended period of time.
o
28-08-2020: Elon Musk demonstrated his startup Neuralink’s
technology, which had been surgically implanted into the skull of a pig named
Gertrude. The aim of this implant is to create a digital link between brains
and computers. The demonstration showcased a computing link displaying the
pig’s brain activity via a wireless link from the Neuralink.
o
07-09-2020：First
'plug and play' brain prosthesis presented in paralyzed person. Stable
recordings let brain and machine learning system build 'partnership' over time.
Because older systems have had to be reset and recalibrated each day, they
haven't been able to tap into the brain's natural learning processes.
