The brain-computer interface goes wireless
March 3, 2013
Neural interface implanted in a monkey (credit: David A Borton et al./J. Neural Eng.)
A team of neuroengineers at Brown University has developed a fully implantable and rechargeable wireless brain sensor capable of relaying real-time broadband signals from up to 100 neurons in freely moving subjects.
Several copies of the novel low-power device, described in the open-access Journal of Neural Engineering, have been performing well in animal models for more than year, a first in the brain-computer interface field.
Brain-computer interfaces could help people with severe paralysis control devices with their thoughts.
Neuroscientists can use such a device to observe, record, and analyze the signals emitted by scores of neurons in particular parts of the animal model’s brain.
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are used to assess the feasibility of people with severe paralysis being able to move assistive devices like robotic arms or computer cursors by thinking about moving their arms and hands.
Braingate (credit: Brown University)
Previous BCIs have required wired systems (such as Braingate, also developed at Brown).
“This was conceived very much in concert with the larger BrainGate team, including neurosurgeons and neurologists giving us advice as to what were appropriate strategies for eventual clinical applications,” said Nurmikko, who is also affiliated with the Brown Institute for Brain Science.
Borton is now spearheading the development of a collaboration between EPFL and Brown to use a version of the device to study the role of the motor cortex in an animal model of Parkinson’s disease.
“This new wireless system addresses a major need for the next step in providing a practical brain-computer interface,” said neuroscientist John Donoghue, the Wriston Professor of Neuroscience at Brown University and director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science.
How the ‘brain radio’ works
Hermetically sealed, wireless neural interface, ready for implanting under the skin (credit: David A Borton et al./J. Neural Eng.)
A pill-sized chip of electrodes implanted on the cortex sends signals through uniquely designed electrical connections into the device’s laser-welded, hermetically sealed 2.2 inches-long, 9 mm thick titanium “can.”
It houses an entire signal processing system: a lithium ion battery, ultralow-power integrated circuits for signal processing and conversion, wireless radio,infrared transmitters, and a copper coil for recharging.
Wireless neural interface (implant), showing microelectrode arrays (inside the skull) for pickup up neural signals, and two boards in the implant for sending RF data for recording and for inductive battery-charging (from external RF primary coil) (credit: David A Borton et al./J. Neural Eng.)
“What makes the achievement discussed in this paper unique is that it’s the first fully implanted neural interface microsystem operated wirelessly; and how it integrated many individual innovations into a complete system,” said lead author David Borton, a former Brown graduate student and postdoctoral research associate who is now at Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne in Switzerland..
“It has operated more than 12 months in large animal models — a milestone for potential [human] clinical translation.”
Exploded view of neural interface (credit: David A Borton et al./J. Neural Eng.)
The device transmits data at 24 Mbps via 3.2 and 3.8 Ghz microwave frequencies (in between WiFi frequency bands) to an external receiver. After a two-hour charge, delivered wirelessly through the scalp via magnetic induction, it can operate for more than six hours.
“The device uses less than 100 milliwatts of power, a key figure of merit,” Nurmikko said.
Co-author Ming Yin, a Brown postdoctoral scholar and electrical engineer, said one of the major challenges that the team overcame in building the device was optimizing its performance to meet the requirements that the implant device be small, low-power, and leak-proof, potentially for decades.
Freeing subjects to move around in the real world
The team worked closely with neurosurgeons to implant the device in three pigs and three rhesus macaque monkeys. The research in these six animals has been helping scientists better observe complex neural signals for as long as 16 months so far. In the new paper, the team shows some of the rich neural signals they have been able to record in the lab. Ultimately this could translate to significant advances that can also inform human neuroscience.
Current wired systems constrain the actions of research subjects, said Arto Nurmikko, professor of engineering at Brown University, who oversaw the device’s invention. The value of wireless transmission is that it frees subjects to move however they intend, allowing them to produce a wider variety of more realistic behaviors.
If neuroscientists want to observe the brain signals produced during some running or foraging behaviors, for instance, they can’t use a cabled sensor to study how neural circuits would form those plans for action and execution or strategize in decision making.
In the experiments in the new paper, the device is connected to one array of 100 cortical electrodes, but the new device design allows for multiple arrays to be connected, Nurmikko said. That would allow scientists to observe ensembles of neurons in multiple related areas of a brain network.
The new wireless device is not approved for use in humans and is not used in clinical trials of brain-computer interfaces. It was designed, however, with that motivation.
The researchers are continuing work on advancing the device for even larger amounts of neural data transmission, reducing its size even further, and improving other aspects of the device’s safety and reliability so that it can someday be considered for clinical application in people with movement disabilities.
The device could also conceivably be used in the Brain Activity Map project.
Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, with partial support from the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Comments (19)
by asiwel
Thinking about this study, and the recently reported one about monitoring neuron activity in zebrafish larvae in real time, reminds me that we have complete brain models for the roundworm (with its 302 neurons and 5000+ synapses). it would be an interesting validation study to use this or similar monitoring systems to provide inputs observed from the living organism in real time to the artificial neuron model and then “watch” them both run in parallel … to see if the “real” neuronal behaviors and outputs actually mirror the processes modeled and hence predicted by the computer. This could be observed over an extended period of time while the worm did all sorts of “wormlike” things. If the model matched the reality, one would have to say that the computer fully models the real worm … is a worm, in fact.
by MikeB
Not one comment on the _downside_ of this yet?
Think the technology through; if the signals can go one way, they can go the other. The potential now for mind interference is now increasingly present eg. injecting signals to interfere with thought, say, for a violent criminal … or political one. Take the technology further and you can overide motor control. Still, further and you can overide thoughts.
As lovely as the concept is of expanding the mind through BCI such as this, it is more likely the technology will be used otherwise. Doubt it? Ask yourself this, how much of the tremendous strides in computing power have been used for bettering mankind? Weaponry and profit (gaming & media industries) have been the primary users and motivators of progress, not medicine nor academic research.
The last firewall to your thoughts, is your skull. Keep it that way.
by Jod
not to speak out of place but isn’t this website partially base on extending peoples lives via technology ? computers included
games are just one way to actually test the durability of the technology people have created
by Thrillhouse
>Ask yourself this, how much of the tremendous strides in computing power have been used for bettering mankind? Weaponry and profit (gaming & media industries) have been the primary users and motivators of progress, not medicine nor academic research.
Your concerns are valid and useful, because without them we really would be prone to these sorts of problems, but I would argue that progress in computation (and progress generally) *has* been beneficial to people, and we shouldn’t be so quick to shy away from its latest offerings just because we mistrust its motives.
Think about trying to use a computer and internet connection from a few years, decades, or centuries back. Medical technologies, safety measures, diet, whatever: if you had cut yourself off from the “weaponry and profit” motivated increases in these areas at some point in the past, do you think you’d be better off or worse off than you are now?
I would argue that improvements in weaponry directly benefit the average person. The quickest way to see this is to consider that a weak weapon in the hands of someone hostile to you is just as strong as it needs to be – if you don’t have a better one to defend against it. A highly motivated group with swords can cause a lot of damage if their victims are also only armed with swords, and indeed, Steven Pinker shows that tribal societies saw higher mortality rates by percentage of population than our own.
It seems to me that more and more complex weapons require more and more stable and complex societies for their manufacture: for instance, if I’m the current strongman in charge of my band of subjects, I can only beat the other strongman and *his* band of subjects by getting more complex weapons, and I can only get more complex weapons by allowing a more complex society to flourish under me (to smelt the ore, get the bindings for the hilts, design the programs for the launch codes, etc), which ends up benefiting my underlings, because now they actually live in a structured society with rules instead of just under fear of my killing them if they don’t follow my whims. Consider what happens if a tribal chieftain kills his rebellious second-in-command: nothing, because the second-in-command was, definitionally, the strongest rivalling force in the tribe. Now consider what happens if Barack Obama kills some leading general: everybody has far more leverage to push back against that kind of abuse of power by one person.
Seems to me that “better weapons” tend to be highly correlated with “better civilisations”, both in terms of power and in terms of the well-being of their inhabitants. You can chicken-egg the argument in circles, asking if weapons are the driving force behind progress or vice versa, but it seems to me that the trend is a good thing either way (a “virtuous spiral”?). A world where everybody only has swords (or rocks, or fists) is a world where the strong rule, for a few years, destroying and taking whatever they want until someone stronger takes over from them: nothing can ever change or improve. No matter how cynical you are about the motives of today’s leaders, it seems to me that those same people could make your life worse at every lower stage of technological development.
Here’s a Matt Ridley talk that’s almost related:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLHh9E5ilZ4
And “profit” may sound like a callous motivation, but it’s also an honest one: could the “charity” of a feudal empire, where the emperor has all the swords and soldiers, really have brought us the internet, cars, industrial civilisation, etc? Or the “charity” of the tribal chief? Of course, I suppose if you *want* to live in a hunter-gatherer society you can do without “profit”, but in that case, the only valid reason I can see for using tools more advanced than stone hand-axes would be to righteously knock such tools out of the hands of others, and then drop those tools yourself when the task of limiting others was completed, and thereafter only ever pick up a tool more advanced than a stone hand-axe to keep that level of tool out of the hands of others, and so on, indefinitely. A sort of self-hamstringing arms-race-in-reverse, a perpetual stagnation machine, fundamentally hostile to all curiosity and growth. Derrick Jensen seems to me to be the best advocate for this POV, but I’m not sure that’s what you had in mind.
by Thrillhouse
>Steven Pinker shows that tribal societies saw higher mortality rates by percentage of population than our own.
Sorry, meant higher HOMICIDE rates.
by Snazster
We have a problem with terms. AI is just an advanced form of automation, a workaround for having to use thought. An intelligent entity created by humans but not through use of their DNA would more properly be referred to as an example of “strong AI” or Synthetic Inteligence (SI) and could conceivably be organic or inorganic or a combination thereof. It would not be a substitute for intelligence (as AI is) but would actually be intelligence.
We seem to have developed a problem, too, in differentiating “The Technological Singularity” from “a technological singularity.”
by SmartAndSober
RE a workaround for having to use thought.
“Workaround” is the essence of technology.
Instead of building wood horses with legs, people invented carts with wheels.
Instead of building mechanical birds with flapping wings, people built airplanes with fixed wings.
I believe AI will take similar path.
by MatthewQ
In the past few days there have been many amazing reports and news items. Just before the Singularity I suppose it will be similar to this but there will be items coming from every branch of scientific research. It will maybe feel like a tsunami rising up a few days or weeks beforehand.
Some will be poised with surfboards.
by Bri
Oh it will get dizzying. Surfs up!!!
by snake0
Hope this makes it to human trials before Steven Hawking pops his clogs
by Jon
Has this device been used with anybody that has locked-in syndrome?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome
by Jon
Apparently not. “The new wireless device is not approved for use in humans and is not used in clinical trials of brain-computer interfaces. It was designed, however, with that motivation.”
But the day that someone with locked-in syndrome is able to be self-sufficient via new technology is probably not that far in the future. That would be amazing.
by Aaron
Combine this with google glass and all is well with the world.
by tim the realist
This device will continue to decrease in size and amount of power required. The number of probes will continue to increase. Our understanding of brain circuits will continue to increase.
Within several years we should be able to interface a bird brain into a new, robotic body. Soon after that we will be able to transfer the thoughts of the bird brain completely into a new substrate. I believe these efforts will supersede AI since we won’t have to create the initial programming. The brain functions will be ported over through these interfaces. This is then real intelligence, not artificial. Once porting of real intelligence becomes commonplace, who could argue that a ported human intelligence would not still be an intelligent entity?
by Gabor
You are describing augmented human intelligence that eventually turns into AI (augmentation will completely diminish and gradually replace the original brain), otherwise known as “uploading”. Yes, this is a good way to stay in the game when AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) will commence.
Although I know what you mean, but in my opinion there is no such thing as “real” or artificial intelligence just levels of intelligence. If you think about it, “real” or human intelligence is artificial. We are born with a biological substrate that has basic level software (to control bodily functions and give us the potential to learn) and we are modifying (training) it with the help of technology and our culture (a technology itself). I would even argue that the only major difference between our brain and computers is a sufficient level of miniaturization. We will achieve the required size/density in the next 15 years and we will interconnect millions of individual functions within arms reach of each other and you wont be able to tell the difference between “it” and an augmented human brain. I said “augmented human brain” because “it” will be much more intelligent than a biological human brain.
This might be unpopular, but if you are a real realist, you must realize how unintelligent we are as individuals. I mean think about it, we are still believing in fairy tales (like religion and Congress for that matter). The hardware we are using is way outdated and much limited, the only reason we got so far is because of collective intelligence and utilizing technology. I know some individuals made exceptional contributions but they couldn’t have done it without the prerequisites of collective intelligence that brought them up and helped them along the way.
by Sno
you make a jump from brain-computer interface to “new substrate” (uploading), but i doubt that’s an easy one. The way i see it, we will keep augmenting the brain, while advances in biotech will make the biological parts effectively immortal. The brain-computer interface should evolve until you can’t really tell where the computer ends and where the brain starts, and that’s how we won’t be made obsolete by AIs : we will benefit directly from moore’s law and if we can network our augmented brains, we will still be far above any supercomputer.
by Gabor
Sno, why wouldn’t it be easy to upload when we have an advanced brain-computer interface and plenty complex artificial substrate available. I would even argue that as soon as the complexity of the substrate exceeds by some measure the complexity of our biological brain, we would probably have a hard time keeping our consciousness in the real brain. I think it would be something like a full immersion virtual reality. If it’s as good (or better) than real reality then most of the time you would not even know where your consciousness resides and if it’s really better, why would you want to regress back to biological?!? I think at this point we will make a conscious decision to keep our minds away from the original biological (weak) body. Remember at this point we will still be just the one person (biological and synthetic together) so denying consciousness to the biological part will not be murder or suicide but more like clipping nails as the whole of consciousness will survive with continuity intact.
This might sound frightening today but in a couple of decades we will have augmented brains and the process will start to make more sense as we realize how much more there is to everything and how much our biological brain is missing out of reality. Just think about it. The reality we know is nothing but signals in the brain that was sensed, traveled, converted, filtered, etc by a very fragile and inaccurate biological system. What about all the other parts of reality that we are unable to sense. Some we have discovered with the help of technology (ultrasound, x-ray, cells, atoms, faraway galaxies, etc) but we still can’t sense them directly and what about all the other things that we don’t know about as of yet. A worm is not aware that there are TVs because it cannot sense it. We are still “worms” compared to the augmented and full synthetic brains of the future. I’m not saying this to downplay humanity as we are IT, we have made this possible with our collective consciousness. Not the individual brains but the collection of them as in essence we have paralleled millions of minds with the help of written notes (books) first and then with computers and hard drives and the internet.
Who would’ve thought 50 years ago that we will put 2.5 billion transistors in a postage stamp size shell all but effortlessly and sell it to millions of people, each for less than a month’s rent. These millions of people are using those devices as we speak and inventing collectively the future that we find hard to wrap our individual minds around.
by SmartAndSober
I like your optimism. But you should know that many artificial substrates can process much faster than the human brains.
We must speed up the brain to match the new substrates.
by Sno
Maybe, it’s just, from my point of view, this is beyond the singularity’s “event horizon”, it’s a tech level too advanced for meaningful speculation. As I see it, we will have very advanced brain augmentation long before we will be able to safely switch substrates. Sure, eventually it should be both possible and desirable, but I think that the people advocating “mind uploading” are too optimistic and getting ahead of themselves. I think that they fail to see the difficulties associated with a safe substrate transfer. Also, they seem to underestimate the relative resilience of biological versus technological (computers break far more easily than brains).