How far is the distance between the idea experiment and the medical reality?

The Utah electrode array, invented in the 1990s, has 96 silicon needles that record the electrical impulses of neurons in the brain.

When I first called Jan Scheuermann, I was 15 minutes late. I tried to apologize to her and kept her waiting, and she was stopped. "I don't just sit and wait for you, you know," she said, and then she suddenly stopped talking. "Okay, actually I just sit like this."

Hughman is 54 years old and has been in business for 14 years. She has lived in California for a long time, and she runs a store that offers a mysterious theater dinner in her spare time, where customers play various roles set by Hugh. “Specially healthy, married, with two children,” she said. One night, just as she arranged dinner, she felt her legs dragged behind her body. "I think it was because it was cold and snowing that night, but there are stairs in the house, there are children, I really have trouble."

The next step is a variety of painful medical treatments and misdiagnosis. A neurologist said she had sclerosis. Since then, Hugh has used electric wheelchairs and “rapidly aging”. She felt that she was born soon, so she moved to Pittsburgh to facilitate her family to take care of her children. Finally, Hugh was diagnosed with a rare condition known as "spinal cerebellar degeneration." She can feel her body, but the nerves responsible for carrying the signal out of her brain can no longer function. Her brain said "moving up," but her limbs could not "hear."

Two and a half years ago, doctors put two interfaces in the skull of Hugh's door, and Hume called them Lewis and Clark. These two interfaces allow the researchers to plug in the wires and connect them to two push-pin-sized implants in the brain's motor cortex. Hughes joined a team of scientists at the University of Pittsburgh. She went two or three times a week to get her body into a robotic arm. She used her own mind to control the robotic arm. She used robotic arms to remove obstacles, stack cones, raise hands and clap, take pictures in silly poses, and do various things, such as pretending to defeat one or two researchers. She called this robotic arm Hector.

Hugh said that she had no disability in her dreams. In 2012, after watching a video of another paralyzed patient with a mind control arm, Hugh received brain surgery. She immediately applied to participate in the study. During the operation, the doctor uses an air gun to shoot a silicon needle called the Utah electrode array into the motor cortex of the rest. The motor cortex is a slender strip of brain that extends from the top of the head to the lower jaw and controls spontaneous movement. When Hugh waking up from the surgery, he felt a severe headache and one of the worst "remorse after buying something." She could not believe that she volunteered to undergo brain surgery. "I thought, God, don't let me be sinned. What I worry most is that the surgery has no effect," Hume said.

But within a few days, she was able to control the robotic arm, and it was an unexpected success: "That was the first time I have been able to move around for the first time in a few years. Although breathless, it is exciting. Research The staff was also happy for a few weeks."

Hume is one of 15 to 20 patients who have participated in long-term research on implants that can transfer information from the brain to the computer. Hume is also the first research object of Pittsburgh. The other nine patients, including patients with advanced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), underwent a similar study in a closely related study called BrainGate. There are also four patients with incompetent or speech-stasis syndrome who have regained some communication skills thanks to a distinctive electrode developed by NeuralSignals, Georgia.

Since the US Food and Drug Administration announced in 2011 that it will relax testing of “true groundbreaking technologies” such as brain-computer interfaces, one-third of these patients have undergone surgery. Researchers began more human trials. Researchers at the California Institute of Technology want to install a "Google Android Tablet OS operating system" for a patient. The Ohio State team teamed up with the research and development agency, Battelle, to implant an implant in a patient in April this year, trying to use the patient's brain signal to control the actuator attached to his arm. Battelle described the idea as "inducing the limbs through spontaneous control of the subject's mind."

These unprecedented bold studies are based on the fact that recording the radio activity of dozens of cells in the brain can more accurately reflect where people are going to move their limbs. "Technically limited, we can only sample hundreds of the billions of neurons in the brain, so they can output amazing signals." Jeep, head of the neurological engineering program at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes, USA · KipLudwig said.

The technology used in Pittsburgh was developed in the physiology laboratory of the research animal, and this technology is clearly still in the experimental stage. The bundled wires from the skull are led to a large rack of signal processors, amplifiers and computers. The cost of the 9-pound mechanical arm is paid by the military, with flexible palms and fingers that can make realistic movements, but it is also very fragile, it will be disconnected frequently, and there is a certain degree of danger. When they can't use it, graduate students look for loose wiring in the tangled wires.

John Donoghue is a neuroscientist at Brown University and the leader of the long-term study of the "gate of the brain." Donohue compares today's brain-computer interface to the leader. Those early models also featured a large number of electronic devices that penetrated the skin into the heart. Some are hand-started. "When you don't know what will happen, try to be outside and less inside," Donohue said today, but the front runners are always self-sufficient, driven by long-lasting batteries, and installed in the doctor's office. in. Donohue said that the human-machine interface is the starting point for similar trajectories.

Brain-controlled computers intended to become medical products must have an economic basis and their risks must be offset by returns. So far, the situation in Hugh is the best indication that the above conditions are achievable. In 2013, the Pittsburgh team reported on the team's treatment of Hughes in the medical journal TheLancet. According to their report, after two weeks, Hugh can move the robotic arm from three directions. Within a few months, she has been able to make seven moves, including rotating Hector's hand and moving thumb. For a moment, she also photographed that she gave herself a chocolate bar, which was the goal she had set for herself.

Researchers are trying to show that they are very close to a real goal – to help the so-called “daily affairs” that most people take for granted, such as brushing their teeth. During the study, the ability of the rest was tested using the Arction Research Arm Test (ARAT), the set of wooden blocks, marbles and cups used by the test and the doctor used to assess the hand flexibility of the newly injured. The same is used. With a score of 57, Hume's score is 17 points, which can be said to be equivalent to the level of patients with severe stroke. If there is no Hector, Hugh's score should be 0. The results of this study were published in the US TV news talk show "60 Minutes".

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