In October 2024, our partners from DPZ participated at the Society for Neuroscience in Chicago. It was a great opportunity for them to share their research and experience with scientists from all over the world.

The poster they presented was Training of real-time robotic grasp decoding from neuronal population activity in macaque motor cortex (M1). It concerned with the primate cortex which can be viewed as a closed-loop dynamical system with very high dimensionality. Extracting a sub-sample of this activity and using it for the decoding of any encoded intention is a challenging task by virtue of the size of the sample relative to the full population. The problem is amplified by the brain’s plasticity, which renders any effort towards decoding ephemeral.

Here they employed a modified Kalman filter to decode the grip of a robotic hand from population spiking activity recorded from two 64 channel Utah arrays implanted in the hand area of primary motor cortex (area M1) of a macaque monkey. Their results confirm that a modified Kalman Filter is suitable to successfully translate cortical activity to motor commands of a robot hand in real time. They also demonstrate the gradual learning by observation and internalization of the task by the monkey using two metrics – the reduction in the transitory nature of the decoder and the speed of the transfer of control of the prosthesis to the monkey. In early experimental sessions, the monkey was slow to take over control and the decoder required retraining within the experiment session, whereas in later sessions decoder training was required only at the beginning of the session and transfer of control was rapid. Furthermore, decoder training involved not only the training of the decoder on the neural activity, but it also adapted brain activity on the decoder, and an equilibrium had to be maintained between the learning processes. This equilibrium was achieved faster and maintained more robustly as the monkey became more proficient in the task, hence demonstrating the viability of this learning-by-observation paradigm.

BCI Pioneer (and 2024 B-CRATOS Webinar participant) Ian Burkhart has recently co-authored a comprehensive review of clinical trials for implantable BCI in Nature Reviews Bioengineering!

Importantly, Ian and his co-authors not only review the history of BCI trials, but provide valuable insights regarding a pathway forward regarding patient ethics, a need for BCI standards, diversity in recruited volunteers, and other needs/barriers for progress.  The truly leave no stone unturned in covering everything from patient participants to research groups to technologies to the practicality of future clinical products.

And given Ian’s unique position as a former implantable BCI study participant, such perspective is invaluable for the field.  We expect this review to be a core resource for those wishing to better understand the history, present, and future of the field.

The review nicely compiles a list of emerging electrodes as of December 2023, and one notes the ever-growing number of data channels these devices aim to collect.  One can imagine that with multiple such devices implanted, we will see exponential increases in the amount and complexity of data collected in BCI of the future.   To take advantage of the full potential of such data, we will need next-generation wireless technologies capable of transmitting it for analysis and storage.  At B-CRATOS, we aim to develop such technologies to bring big data BCI systems to impactful real-world applications through improved integration within the body and to devices outside of it.  We also expect that by developing next-gen wireless technologies for implantable systems, patient acceptance, usability, and safety can be greatly improved over current systems.

Find the full article here!

Between 1 and 4 September 2024, the 10th IEEE International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics held in Heidelberg, Germany. This conference aims to highlight the theoretical and practical challenges linked with the integration of robotics and mechatronics into medicine and biology.

In particular, our colleague Robinson Guachi from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna participated with the paper “𝐌𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐒𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐒𝐤𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐜 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐝: 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐩𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐬”. Here the summary of such an amazing presentation:

Human ability to manipulate and grasp objects relies heavily on tactile information from the skin, which the brain uses to guide motor actions. With advancements in neuroprosthetics, there is growing interest in integrating advanced tactile sensors into prosthetic hands. The paper presented during the conference, supported by the European B-Cratos project, proposes a systematic approach for designing and integrating triboelectric-based electronic skin (e-skin) into a prosthetic hand. It outlines the identification of technical requirements, material selection for soft skin, and optimization of sensor placement on the finger.  

In May 2024, the third B-CRATOS newsletter was published.

Within these 6 articles you can:
🔸find more information about our last Consortium Meeting in LINKS Foundation
🔸 watch the entire version of our successful webinar on Clinical and User impacts on BCI with Paul Wanda (BlackRock Microsystems Europe), Mijail S.(Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Ian Burkhart and Scott Imbrie (BCI pioneers and advocates)
🔸 discover our impactful infographic and “meet our team” section
🔸 learn the following steps concerning the EIC Innovation Bootcamp 4.0
🔸 watch the interview of Robinson Guachi – Senior Research Fellow Mechanical Engineer – and Burim Kabashi – Research Fellow Electronic Engineer – in Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna concerning their incredible work on Mia Hand!

Discover more here!

On 20th June 2024 a webinar with John Donoghue, Professor of Neuroscience and Engineering at Brown University took place. Watch such an interesting discussion of Brain-Computer Interfaces’ background (BCI) to discover the impact on #healthcare and daily living!

Not able to participate at it? Please find the replay here: Special webinar on BCI’s history with John Donoghue (youtube.com)