Viral-Mediated Optogenetic Stimulation of Peripheral Motor Nerves in Non-human Primates.

Reanimation of muscles paralyzed by disease states such as spinal cord injury remains a highly sought therapeutic goal of neuroprosthetic research. Optogenetic stimulation of peripheral motor nerves expressing light-sensitive opsins is a promising approach to muscle reanimation that may overcome several drawbacks of traditional methods such as functional electrical stimulation (FES). However, the utility of these methods has only been demonstrated in rodents to date, while translation to clinical practice will likely first require demonstration and refinement of these gene therapy techniques in non-human primates.

Multi-scale, multi-modal analysis uncovers complex relationship at the brain tissue-implant neural interface: new emphasis on the biological interface.

Objective: Implantable neural electrode devices are important tools for neuroscience research and have an increasing range of clinical applications. However, the intricacies of the biological response after implantation, and their ultimate impact on recording performance, remain challenging to elucidate. Establishing a relationship between the neurobiology and chronic recording performance is confounded by technical challenges related to traditional electrophysiological, material, and histological limitations.

Idle state classification using spiking activity and local field potentials in a brain computer interface.

Previous studies of intracortical brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have often focused on or compared the use of spiking activity and local field potentials (LFPs) for decoding kinematic movement parameters. Conversely, using these signals to detect the initial intention to use a neuroprosthetic device or not has remained a relatively understudied problem. In this study, we examined the relative performance of spiking activity and LFP signals in detecting discrete state changes in attention regarding a user's desire to actively control a BCI device.

Differentiating closed-loop cortical intention from rest: building an asynchronous electrocorticographic BCI.

Objective: Recent experiments have shown that electrocorticography (ECoG) can provide robust control signals for a brain-computer interface (BCI). Strategies that attempt to adapt a BCI control algorithm by learning from past trials often assume that the subject is attending to each training trial. Likewise, automatic disabling of movement control would be desirable during resting periods when random brain fluctuations might cause unintended movements of a device.

Cortical adaptation to a chronic micro-electrocorticographic brain computer interface.

Brain-computer interface (BCI) technology decodes neural signals in real time to control external devices. In this study, chronic epidural micro-electrocorticographic recordings were performed over primary motor (M1) and dorsal premotor (PMd) cortex of three macaque monkeys. The differential gamma-band amplitude (75-105 Hz) from two arbitrarily chosen 300 μm electrodes (one located over each cortical area) was used for closed-loop control of a one-dimensional BCI device.

Dynamic control of extracellular environment in in vitro neural recording systems.

A technique is presented for rapid fabrication of microfluidic channels on top of multichannel in vitro neural recording electrode arrays. The channels allow dynamic control of both stable and transient flow patterns over localized areas of the array, over biologically relevant timescales. A cellular model consisting of thermally sensitive dorsal root ganglion neurons was integrated into the devices.