BrainGate brain-computer interface makes advances

PROVIDENCE – Three people with paralysis used the BrainGate brain-computer interface to type on a screen with unprecedented speed and accuracy, Brown University reported. This brain-computer interface is an investigational device only, and limited by federal law to investigational use only, the university cautioned.

The study, published in the journal eLife, was led by researchers at Stanford University, a partner in the BrainGate research collaboration that includes Brown University, the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and Case Western Reserve University.

Two participants were enrolled by Stanford, and the third by the Providence VA Medical Center. With one or two tiny electrode arrays implanted in the brain’s motor cortex, each participant thought about moving a cursor with his or her hand and arm to direct it over an on-screen keyboard. One participant typed 39 correct characters per minute, or about eight words per minute, Brown reported.

“This incredible collaboration continues to break new ground in developing powerful, intuitive, flexible neural interfaces that we all hope will one day restore communication, mobility and independence for people with neurologic disease or injury,” study co-author Dr. Leigh Hochberg, professor of engineering at Brown and a neurologist and neuroscientist at Massachusetts General Hospital and the VA Rehabilitation Research and Development Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology in Providence, said in the statement.

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Hochberg directs the pilot clinical trial of the BrainGate system. BrainGate began at Brown more than 15 years ago in the lab of John Donoghue, a Brown University neuroscience and engineering professor.

The newly reported performance gains were not small, said Krisha Shenoy, a Stanford electrical-engineering professor, whose lab developed algorithms for the system, which decodes brain signals and turns them into digital commands. These performance gains, she added, might become practical at some point for restoring communication capabilities for people with paralysis of all four limbs, including people who can no longer speak due to such diseases as ALS or a brainstem stroke.

“This study reports the highest speed and accuracy, by a factor of three, over what’s been shown before,” Shenoy, co-senior author along with Jaimie Henderson, a Stanford neurosurgery professor, said in the statement. “We’re approaching the speed at which you can type text on your cellphone.”

Hochberg championed the collaboration that produced such promising results at different sites and in different participants, two of whom have ALS and one of whom sustained a severe spinal cord injury.

“An idea – a new algorithm, a new interface – is developed and refined at one site, and then ‘shipped’ to a consortium partner where it’s independently validated by different scientists and, perhaps more importantly, a different trial participant who may have a different form of paralysis,” Hochberg said in the release. “This helps us to know that our results can generalize and that we’re [on track] to developing a powerful neurotechnology and assistive device. No doubt that there is still a lot of research left to be done, but I’m pleased with the progress we’re able to report today.”

Among the several entities funding this groundbreaking study are the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Dean Institute for Integrated Research on Atrial Fibrillation and Stroke, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

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