Neural Technology : Brain Computer Interface

Occupational Therapy is a growing field; one that is constantly changing as technology becomes more advanced. There are different techniques and methods used in this field, as well as the field of physical therapy, in order assist in client advancement and growth. The traditional method being discussed is Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation also known as PNF and the contemporary technique is Kinesio Taping. These techniques and methods came about for the same purpose, and that is to ultimately help both the Practitioners and of course clients they work with.

Electronic stimulation is typically used to relieve pain or to retrain the muscles. A shock is delivered to a muscle, helping it to contract. This technique works best when combined with other forms of rehabilitation. Although e-stim is rarely used alone, it plays a crucial role in expediting the healing process. Through this electronic stimulation program, we will offer services that would otherwise be inaccessible to the geriatric population. A major reason for patients not using e-stim technology is the cost. Medicare will not cover e-stim if it is used as the primary form of treatment (The ASHA Leader).

It all started when Toronto experimental treatment centers started using deep brain stimulation (DBS) to improve memory in people with Alzheimer’s disease. Progressive loss of memory is the main symptom of this disorder, and while some drugs are available, they provide partial relief, or even less than that.

When we need to hire someone here at BCI, it can often feel very overwhelming. I don’t know if we are anything like you, but when we get to the point of hiring, we are typically desperately in need of another person, and it is tempting to just want to fill the position with a person who has a pulse and will show up regularly. We have learned the hard way that while it is tempting to take that stance, it never pans out for us. We, like many of you, have a small, tight knit team, and the way that person can relate to the rest of our team matters.

In the mid 20's, Recording mind signals from the human scalp has picked up consideration of humankind. individuals trusted that having a gadget that is equipped for perusing mind flags and changing over them into control and correspondence signs is sci-fi because of films and books such as star trek. Back in the 60's, individuals attempted to begin recording cerebrum flags. However, required innovations for measuring and preparing mind signs were excessively constrained and costly. The primary BCI working framework was found by Dr. Grey Walter in 1964. Dr. Grey found the essential framework of the BCI while curing a patient by seeing that the gadget associated with the patient actuates before the way toward pressing the button by the patient.

In the article, “Brain Mapping allows patient to use mind to control artificial fingers.,” the Baltimore Sun looks at the new advances in the world of prosthetic limbs. Prosthetic limbs are fake body parts that try to recreate the amputated parts of a person or animal. A new theory for prosthetics is brain controlled fingers and joints. In this new hope for amputees, doctors are creating brain controlled arms and hands. Guy Hotson, a biomedical engineer, stated, “we still have a way to go before we get this in a practical clinic setting.” Well, according to biomedical engineers, many prototypes are already being made. But while reading the article, I was confused by what this type of science biomedical engineering was. SInce this word is only

This paper was a ground-breaking entry into the combined usage of deep brain stimulation (DBS) and optogenetics. Studies involving DBS are usually met with potential confounders as to the route of therapeutic intervention. The authors mentioned three, the first being the difficulty in determining specific circuits responsible due to the complexity of nervous tissue. Another being that DBS makes use of high frequency stimulation (HFS) which itself produces a myriad of changes in activity that can be hard to pin down in target cells. The final being that DBS creates artefacts through electrical stimulation that clouds target cell responses in neural circuits1. Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is characterized by a loss of dopamine in the striatum that results in both motor and affective pathologies. Specifically modulated are the direct and indirect pathways in the basal ganglia. The indirect pathway is studied in this paper and comprises the global pallidus interna and its afferent synapses on the subthalamic nucleus.2 To address this aspect of PD and the aforementioned DBS issues the authors decided to make use of channel rhodopsins, halorhodopsins, optrodes and optical stimulation. To induce the PD symptoms, rodents were injected with 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA) to induce hemi parkinsonian symptoms on the contralateral side and in vivo delivery of ChR2 and NpHR was done via lentiviruses.

Reverse paralysis is something researchers have been interested in for years. In the past, lab animals and a very few amount of people have controlled robotic arms or computer cursors simply with what they were thinking because of the brain implant wired to the machines. Nowadays researchers are much more in-touch with technology and ready to reverse paralysis for good. Instead of having brain implants wired to machines, they are now wirelessly connected to the brain, directly

In so doing, the proposed work will inform the design of protocols for the assessment of the functional integrity of the CNS, of human-machine interfaces, and training approaches to enhance rehabilitation and motor

The hope is that the approach could one day be used to bypass damaged areas of the brain and relay signals in people with traumatic brain injury, stroke or epilepsy.

The field of neuroscience is rapidly expanding; recent understanding of brain function has expanded the study of infant brains. Novel neuroscientific techniques will enhance treatment, diagnosis, and growth of the infant brain. Interest in the treatment of neurological diseases and cures dates back many years (Wendel, 2010) and with a new focus on the infant brain researchers hope to find answers that will pinpoint major causes of infant brain disorders.

The nervous system serves the purposes of communication inside of the body, coordination, movement, and sensation. The primary components that make the nervous system carry out its functions include the brain, spinal cord, nerves, and ganglia (Saladin 2011 p. 10). Each component carries out its specific function through electrical and chemicals messages (Saladin 2011 p. 352). The cerebral cortex of the brain is made up of neurons that make connections with other parts of the brain. Different types of brain rhythms occur under different conditions. Alpha waves occur when an individual is relaxed with their eyes closed. Relaxed means that the individual is not focused on external stimuli or performing mental operations. Beta

BCI can help individuals communicate without relying on muscular control, which is critical for clinical populations of neuromuscular disease patients, such ALS (Wolpaw, 2002). The use of BCI can enable communication and increase quality of life but to date the effects of mental fatigue have been ignored. However, the current state of BCI technology and overall usability is not advanced enough to replace more

Now with so many choices we are in a dilemma to choose the correct Assistive technology. Choosing it is most important part as it includes all the further steps which would depend on the type of technology used. There is a team that is trained to match particular technology to meet the specific needs so a person to function more independently. This team includes number of people that consist of doctors and teachers, engineers and specialists and other consulting representatives from companies that work on the assistive technology products. This team provides you guidance and helps to select the correct type of technology.

This project aims to improve performance of NASA missions by developing brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies for augmented human-system interaction. BCI technologies will add completely new modes of interaction, which operate in parallel with keyboards, speech, or other manual controls, thereby increasing the bandwidth of human-system interaction. The research will extend recent feasibility demonstrations of electromyographic (EMG) methods for neurocontrol to the domain of electroencephalographic (EEG) methods of neurocontrol. These methods will bypass muscle activity and draw control signals directly from the human brain. BCI technologies will provide powerful and intuitive modes of interaction with 2-D and 3-D data, particularly for visualization and searching in complex data structures, such as geographical maps, satellite images, and terrain databases.