ONE STEP CLOSER TO EFFICIENT ROBOTIC LIMBS
A device that would allow paralyzed people to use their thoughts to move robotic limbs fluidly and realistically is now one step closer to reality.
A team of scientists from Harvard, MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital led by Ziv Williams have found two groups of cells in one area of the monkey brain that allow the animals to remember a sequence of two movements at once. The team was then able to program a computer to interpret those brain patterns, in turn moving a cursor on a screen in the planned sequence.
The development is an improvement over current brain-machine interfaces, which focus on translating a single thought into a single movement in an external device.
Most real-world actions are multi-faceted. When planning to take a sip from a cup or play a song on a piano, for example, people imagine the fluid behavior, not each individual movement required to get it done.
To bring technology closer to the goal of fluid and efficient movements, the researchers trained two male rhesus monkeys to move a cursor on a computer screen to two targets that had previously flashed in front of them, one after the other. During each round, the researchers recorded activity in 281 neurons in two areas of the prefontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for planning complex actions.
You can read this article on the below mentioned link as well.
http://news.discovery.com/tech/one-step-closer-to-efficient-robotic-limbs-121114.html#mkcpgn=emnws1
No comments:
Post a Comment