BRAIN-Computer Interface Allows Palyzed Users to Customize Their Sense of Touch

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Scientists are one step closer to developing to Brain-Computer Interface, or BCI, that allows people with tetrapplegia to restore their lost sense of touch.

While Exploing A Digitally Represented Object Throud Their Artificially Created Sense of Touch, Users Description The Warm Fur of A Purring Cat, The Smooth Rigid Surface of A Door Key and the Cool Roundness of an Apple. This Research, The Collaboration Between Pitt and the University of Chicago, is published in Nature Communications.

In contrast to earlier experiments where artificial touch often felt like indistinct buzzing or tingling and didn’t vary from object to object, scientist bci users control over the details of the electrical stimulation that creatile sensations, rather than making those decisions Themselves. This Key Innovation Allowed Participants To Recreate of Touch That Felt Intuitive to Them.

“Touch is an important part of nonverbal social communication; it is a sensation that is personal and that carries a lot of meaning,” Said lead author ceci verbaarschot, ph.d., assistant teacher of neurological surgery and biomedical engineering at the university of texts-butwestern and a formdoctoral Fellow at Pitt Rehab Neural Engineering Labs.

“Designing Their Own Sensations Allows BCI Ussers to Make Interactions with Objects Feel Moreistic and Meaningful, Which Gets Us Closer to Creating A Neuroprosthetic That Feels Pleasant and Intuitive to Use.”

Brain-Computer Interface is a System That Converts Brain Activity into Signals That Could Replace, Restore or Improve Body Functions That Are Typially Controlled By The Brain, Such As Muscle Movement. A bci can also be used to repair damaged feedback from the body and restore lost sensations by directly stimulating the brain.

OVER THE LAST DECADE OF RESEARCH, PITT SCIENTISTS HELPED A PARALYZED MAN TO EXPERIENCE THE SENSATION OF TOUCH THROUGH A MIND-CONTROLLLEN ROBOTIC ARM AND SHOW THIS ARTIFICIAL SEENSE OF TOUCH MADING THE ROBOTIC ARM MORE EFFICIENT.

STILL, TOSE TACTILE SENSIONS WERE IMPERFECT AND STAYED SIMILAR BETEY OBJECTS THAT HAD DIFFERENT TEXTURE OR TEMPERATURE: SHAVING SOMEONE’S HAND FELT THE SAME AS LIFING A SOLID, HARD ROCK.

NOW, Researchers are closure to their goal of creating an intuitive sense of touch.

In the New Study, BCI Ussers Were Able to Design Distinct Tactile Experiences for Different Obifferent Displayed on A Computer Screen, and Could Guess the Object Just by Sensation Alone, Thought Imperfectly.

Searching for the Perfect Touch Resebled A Game of “Hot and Cold” in A Dark Room of Infinite Tactile Sensations. Scientists Asked Study Participants, All of Whom Lost Sensation in Their Hands Because of A Spinal Cord Injury, to Find A Combination of Stimulation Parameters That Felt Like Petting A Cat or Touch An Apple, Key, Towel or Toast – While Exploing an Object Gifted to Them Digitally.

All Three Study Participants Description Objects in Rich and Vivid Terms That Made Logical Sense But Were Union and Subjective: To One Participant, Cat Felt Warm and “Tappy;” to another – somooth and silky.

When the image was Taken Away and Participants Had to Rely on Stimulation Alone, They Were Able to Correctly Identify One of Five Objects 35% of the Time: Better Than Chance But Far From Perfect.

“We Designed this Study to Shoot for the Moon and Made It Into Orbit,” Said Senior Author of the Study Robert Gaunt, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Pitt.

“Participants Had a Really Hard Task of Distinguishing Between Objects By Tactile Sensation Alone and Thes Were Successful at It. Even When they have mystakes, thhos mystakes Were Predictable: It’s Harder to Tell Apart a cat and a towel sense poth are soft Less Likely to confuse the cat for a key. “

The Study Represents an Important Step Toward Invoking Acurate Sensation of Touch on A Person’s Paralyzed Hand and Creating An Artificial Limb That Seamlessly Integrates Into Person’s Unique Sensory World.