Battelle’s NeuroLife uses thought to control paralyzed limbs

Patient Ian Burkhart (front) and project electrical engineering lead Nick Annetta (back right). (photo by Battelle) Researchers at Battelle today published a paper in Nature covering the progress of its NeuroLife system, implanted in quadriplegic patient Ian Burkhart. In 2014, Burkhart became the 1st patient ever to achieve motor control of his paralyzed arms and hands through his own thoughts. The NeuroLife system restored enough motion for Burkhart to perform tasks such as pouring out bottles, mixing liquids and taking a credit card from his wallet and swiping it. Burkhart, a quadriplegic, was injured in a 2010 diving accident that paralyzed him from the chest down. The NeuroLife system, which is the culmination of many years of work for the researchers and engineers at Battelle, consists of a brain-implanted microchip, a computer system with custom built algorithms and machine learning, and specially made sleeves designed to stimulate arm muscles – allowing the patient use thoughts to control the limb. “The project really got under way about 6 years ago, in the development of the system we have today,” electrical engineering task lead Nick Annetta told MassDevice.com yesterday. “A lot of that development and planning was really working to try and be ready for the different type of signals we thought we might see in the brain.” To develop the system, Annetta and his Battelle team collected as much as a gigabyte of data every minute from the...
Source: Mass Device - Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Tags: Neurological Prosthetics Research & Development Battelle Source Type: news