Summary: Researchers have developed a novel approach to improve neuroprostheses, making them more accurate and useful for normal things. Researchers demonstrated improved control of online hands in rhesus monkeys by analyzing neural signals associated with hand postures, carefully imitating fine motor skills.
This study suggests that hand exercises, rather than motion velocity, are key to greater controlling dentures, bridging damaged nerve links for tasks like grasping. Coming neuroprostheses had re-establish fine motor skills in people with paralysis or neurodegenerative diseases, changing daily function with this advancement.
Important Information:
- The accuracy of neuroprosthesis power improved when focusing on hands posture signals.
- Online hand expressions in trained macaque monkeys closely matched real-hand exercises.
- Studies have the potential to improve fine motor skills in upcoming side prostheses.
Origin: DPZ
Strength and precision straps are a part of our daily lives. Carrying shopping bags and inserting a thread into the attention of a needle are two examples. We only become aware of how significant ( and fantastic ) our hands are when we are no longer able to use them, such as when paraplegia or ALS-causing progressive muscle paralysis occurs.
In order to support patients, researchers have been researching neuroprostheses for decades. People with disabilities might gain flexibility up using these unnatural hands, hands, or legs.
Brain-computer interface that decode the signals from the brain, convert them into moves, and then handle the implant bridge damaged nerve links.
But, hand dentures in specific have lacked the necessary fine motor skills to be used in everyday life up until now.
Andres Agudelo-Toro, a researcher in the European Primate Center’s Neurobiology Laboratory and the study’s first author, says that “how well a implant works depends largely on the neural data that the computer interface that controls it reads.”
The signs that determine a grasping movement’s motion have been the subject of earlier research on arm and hand movements. We were interested in determining whether side posture neurological signals might be more effective for controlling neuroprostheses.
For the study, the researchers worked with rhesus monkeys , ( Macaca mulatta ). They have pronounced fine motor skills as well as a highly developed frightened and visual system, just like humans. They are therefore especially useful for studying grasping activities.
The scientists instructed two rhinoceros monkeys to walk a virtual game hand on a screen in preparation for the principal experiment. The monkeys performed the hand movements with their own hands while simultaneously observing the electronic hand’s related activity on the screen during this training period. A data gloves with electrical sensors, which the primates wore during the process, recorded the animals ‘ hand movements.
After learning the task, the monkeys were instructed to use an “imaging” technique to control the electronic hand in a subsequent step. The cerebral brain areas where neurons are exclusively responsible for controlling hand movements were evaluated for their activity.
The researchers focused on the signals that represent the various hands and hand postures, and adapted the engine of the brain-computer program, which translates the neurological data into action, in a related protocol.
” Deviating from the traditional method, we adapted the algorithms so that not only the location of a motion is significant, but also how you get it, i. e., the course of execution”, explains Andres Agudelo-Toro.
” This eventually led to the most appropriate results”.
The researchers then compared the movements of the game hand to that of the actual hand, which had formerly been recorded, and were able to demonstrate that these movements were carried out with comparable accuracy.
” In our research, we were able to demonstrate that the signals that control the position of a palm are especially essential for controlling a neuroprosthesis”, says Hansjörg Scherberger, mind of the Neurobiology Laboratory and top author of the study.
” These findings can now be applied to enhance the efficiency of upcoming brain-computer interface and, in turn, to enhance the fine motor abilities of neural dentures.”
Funding: The study was supported by the German Research Foundation ( DFG, grants FOR-1847 and SFB-889 ) and by the European Union Horizon 2020 project B-CRATOS ( GA 965044 ).
About this information about neurotechnology and prosthetics
Author: Susanne Diederich
Source: DPZ
Contact: Susanne Diederich – DPZ
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Start entry.
” Accurate neurological control of a palm implants by posture-related action in the animal grasping circuit” by Andres Agudelo-Toro et cetera. Nerve
Abstract
The animal grasping circuit’s posture-related activity allows for precise neurological control of a hands prothesis.
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs ) have the potential to allow paralyzed people to resume their daily movements, but the interface of today also lack the good control needed to socialize with daily items.
Hand BCI research have focused mainly on motion control in response to our knowledge of cortical activity during arm approaches. But, mounting evidence suggests that position, and never speed, dominates in hand-related places.
A BCI coaching paradigm that emphasizes the reproduction of posture transitions was created to examine whether this signal you intrinsically influence a prosthesis. With higher accuracy, monkeys who were trained in this protocol were able to execute the extremely complex precision grip on a comprehensive hand prosthesis.
Analysis revealed that power was primarily affected by the position signal in the goal grasping places. We demonstrate neurological posture control for a comprehensive hand prosthesis for the first time, opening the door to future interfaces that can use this extra information channel.
