Brain Gate

R. K.
DESAI ACHCHHARIWALA COLLEGE OF COMPUTER & APPLIED SCIENCE
KHUSHBOO DESAI 1
R. K. DESAI ACHCHHARIWALA COLLEGE OF COMPUTER & APPLIED SCIENCE
INDEX
SR.NO TITLE PAGE NO
1. Introduction 4
1.1 General 4
1.2 History 7
1.3 Principle 10
1.4 Brain Computer Interface 12
2. Working 19
3. Application 22
4. Case Study 23
5. Advantages 26
6. Disadvantages 27
7. Future Scope 28
8. Conclusion 29
9. Bibliography 30
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BRAIN GATE TECHNOLOGY
ABSTRACT:
Brain Gate is a brain implant system developed by the bio-tech company Cyber kinetics in
2008 in conjunction with the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University. The mind-to-
movement system that allows a quadriplegic man to control a computer using only his thoughts
is a scientific milestone. It was reached, in large part, through the brain gate system. This
system has become a boon to the paralyzed. The device was designed to help those who have
lost control of their limbs, or other bodily functions, such as patients with amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS) or spinal cord injury. The principle of operation behind the Brain Gate System
is that with intact brain function, brain signals are generated even though they are not sent to
the arms, hands and legs. The signals are interpreted and translated into cursor movements,
offering the user an alternate Brain Gate pathway to control a computer with thought, just as
individuals who have the ability to move their hands use a mouse. A long- term goal of the
Brain Gate research team is to create a system that, quite literally, turns thought into action –
and is useful to people with neurologic disease or injury, or limb loss. Currently, the system
consists of a “sensor” (a device implanted in the brain that records signals directly related to
imagined limb movement); a “decoder” (a set of computers and embedded software that turns
the brain signals into a useful command for an external device); and, the external device –
which could be a standard computer desktop or other communication device, a powered
wheelchair, a prosthetic or robotic limb, or, in the future, a functional electrical stimulation
device that can move paralyzed limbs directly.
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1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 GENERAL
Brain and Neurons

Brain is the center of nervous system which is present in head, protected by the skull.
#Brain controls the whole body actions and reactions.
#Neurons are the responsive cells in nervous system that processes and transmits information
by electrochemical signals.
#there are 100 billion neurons are available in human body
Neurons and Nervous system

Neurons are the constituents of Nervous system and plays the vital role in our daily life.
#Neurons have very complex operation to perform and if it stops working then one cannot be
able to work.
#Nervous system is linked with Brain and is controlled by it. The commands specified by the
brain is carried to the various organs through them
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How does the brain control motor function work?

The brain is "hardwired" with connections, which are made by billions of neurons that make
electricity whenever they are stimulated. The electrical patterns are called brain waves.
Neurons act like the wires and gates in a computer, gathering and transmitting electrochemical
signals over distances as far as several feet. The brain encodes information not by relying on
single neurons, but by spreading it across large populations of neurons, and by rapidly adapting
to new circumstances.
Motor neurons carry signals from the central nervous system to the muscles, skin and glands
of the body, while sensory neurons carry signals from those outer parts of the body to the
central nervous system. Receptors sense things like chemicals, light, and sound and encode this
information into electrochemical signals transmitted by the sensory neurons. And interneurons
tie everything together by connecting the various neurons within the brain and spinal cord. The
part of the brain that controls motor skills is located at the ear of the frontal lobe.
How does this communication happen?

Muscles in the body's limbs contain embedded sensors called muscle spindles that measure the
length and speed of the muscles as they stretch and contract as you move. Other sensors in the
skin respond to stretching and pressure. Even if paralysis or disease damages the part of the
brain that processes movement, the brain still makes neural signals. They're just not
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being sent to the arms, hands and legs.

 A technique called neurofeedback uses connecting sensors on the scalp to translate
brain waves into information a person can learn from. The sensors register different
frequencies of the signals produced in the brain. These changes in brain wave patterns
indicate whether someone is concentrating or suppressing his impulses, or whether he
is relaxed or tense.
NEUROPROSTHETIC DEVICE:
A neuroprosthetic device known as Brain gate converts brain activity into computer commands.
A sensor is implanted on the brain, and electrodes are hooked up to wires that travel to a
pedestal on the scalp. From there, a fiber optic cable carries the brain activity data to a nearby
computer.
1.2 HISTORY:
 Research on BCIs has been going on for more than 30 years, but from the mid-1990s
There has been a dramatic increase in working experimental implants.
 Brain gate was developed by the bio-tech company Cyber kinetics in 2003 in
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Conjunction with the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University.
Fig 1. Experiment on rat
Rats implanted with BCIs in Theodore Berger's experiments. Several laboratories have
managed to record originals f monkey and rat cerebral cortexes in order to operate BCIs to
carry out movement. Monkeys have navigated computer cursors on screen and commanded
robotic arms to perform simple tasks simply by thinking about the task and without any motor
output. Other research on cats has decoded visual signals.
Garrett Stanley's recordings of cat vision using a BCI implanted in the lateral geniculate
nucleus (top row: original image; bottom row: recording)
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In 1999, researchers led by Garrett Stanley at Harvard University decoded neuronal firings to
reproduce images seen by cats. The team used an array of electrodes embedded in the thalamus
(which integrates all of the brain’s sensory input) of sharp-eyed cats. Researchers targeted 177
brain cells in the thalamus lateral geniculate nucleus area, which decodes signals from the
retina. The cats were shown eight short movies, and their neuron firings were recorded. Using
mathematical filters, the researchers decoded the signals to generate movies of what the cats
saw and were able to reconstruct recognizable scenes and moving objects.
In the 1980s, Apostol’s Georgopoulos at Johns Hopkins University found a mathematical

relationship between the (based on a cosine function). He also found that dispersed groups of
neurons in different areas of the brain collectively controlled
Motor commands but was only able to record the firings of neurons in one area at a time
because of technical limitations imposed by his equipment.
There has been rapid development in BCIs since the mid-1990s. Several groups have been able
to capture complex brain motor centre signals using recordings from neural ensembles (groups
of neurons) and use these to control external devices, including research groups led by Richard
Andersen, John Donoghue, Phillip Kennedy, Miguel Nicolle’s, and Andrew Schwartz.
Fig 2. Diagram of the BCI
Diagram of the BCI developed by Miguel Nicolle’s and colleagues for use on Rhesus
monkeys
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Later experiments by Nicolle’s using rhesus monkeys, succeeded in closing the feedback loop
and reproduced monkey reaching and grasping movements in a robot arm. With their deeply
cleft and furrowed brains, rhesus monkeys are considered to be better models for human
neurophysiology than owl monkeys. The monkeys were trained to reach and grasp objects on
a computer screen by manipulating a joystick while corresponding movements by a robot arm
were hidden. The monkeys were later shown the robot directly and learned to control it by
viewing its movements. The BCI used velocity predictions to control reaching movements and
simultaneously predicted hand gripping force.
Other labs that develop BCIs and algorithms that decode neuron signals include John Donoghue
from Brown University, Andrew Schwartz from the University of Pittsburgh and Richard
Andersen from Caltech. These researchers were able to produce working BCIs even though
they recorded signals from far fewer neurons than Nicolle’s (15–30 neurons versus 50–200
neurons).
Donoghue's group reported training rhesus monkeys to use a BCI to track visual targets on a
computer screen with or without assistance of a joystick (closed-loop BCI). Schwartz's group
created a BCI for three-dimensional tracking in virtual reality and also reproduced BCI control
in a robotic arm.
1.3 PRINCIPLE:
"The principle of operation of the Brain Gate Neural Interface System is that with intact brain
function, neural signals are generated even though they are not sent to the arms, hands and legs.
These signals are interpreted by the System and a cursor is shown to the user on a computer
screen that provides an alternate "Brain Gate pathway". The user can use that cursor to control
the computer, just as a mouse is used."
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Fig 3. Brain Computer Interface

Brain Gate is a brain implant system developed by the bio-tech company Cyber kinetics in
2003 in conjunction with the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University. The device
was designed to help those who have lost control of their limbs, or other bodily functions, such
as patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or spinal cord injury. The computer chip,
which is implanted into the patient and converts the intention of the user into computer
commands.
Fig 4. Brain Gate Technology
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NUERO CHIP:
Fig 5. Nuero Chip

Currently the chip uses 100 hair-thin electrodes that 'hear' neurons firing in specific areas of
the brain, for example, the area that controls arm movement. The activity is translated into
electrically charged signals and are then sent and decoded using a program, which can move
either a robotic arm or a computer cursor. According to the Cyber kinetics' website, three
patients have been implanted with the Brain Gate system. The company has confirmed that one
patient (Matt Nagle) has a spinal cord injury, whilst another has advanced ALS.
In addition to real-time analysis of neuron patterns to relay movement, the Brain gate array is
also capable of recording electrical data for later analysis. A potential use of this feature would
be for a neurologist to study seizure patterns in a patient with epilepsy.
Brain gate is currently recruiting patients with a range of neuromuscular and neurodegenerative
conditions for pilot clinical trials in the United States.
The human brain is a parallel processing supercomputer with the ability to instantaneously
process vast amounts of information. Brain Gate’s™ technology allows for an extensive
amount of electrical activity data to be transmitted from neurons in the brain to computers for
analysis. In the current Brain Gate™ system, a bundle consisting of one hundred gold wires
connects the array to a pedestal which extends through the scalp. The pedestal is connected by
an external cable to a set of computers in which the data can be stored for off-line analysis or
analyzed in real-time. Signal processing software algorithms analyze the electrical activity of
neurons and translate it into control signals for use in various computer-based applications.
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Intellectual property has been developed and research is underway for a wireless device as
well.
Fig 6. Signal Processing
1.4 BRAIN-COMPUTER INTERFACE
New research into how signals from the brain can be captured by a computer or other device
to carry out an individual's command may allow people with motor disabilities to more full
communicate and function in their daily lives.
The technique relies on the fact that multiple sensors acting together provide the central nervous
system with important feedback for controlling movement. For example, sensors called muscle
spindles that are embedded in muscle fibers measure the length and speed of muscle stretch,
while other sensors in the skin respond to stretch and pressure. When an individual is paralyzed
by injury or disease, neural signals from these sensors cannot reach the brain, and thus cannot
be used to control motor responses. Paralysis also keeps neural signals originating in the motor
regions of the brain from reaching the muscles.
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The work of Weber and his colleagues shows that it is possible to extract feedback information
from the body's natural sensors that could then be used to control a prosthetic device, allowing
an individual to regain some command and control of his or her own movements.
A sterile surgical procedure is used to implant arrays of 36 microelectrodes into the dorsal root
ganglion, part of the spinal nerve that contains the nerve cell bodies that house these natural
sensors. Historically, it was difficult to record from these sensors because their cell bodies are
located in this difficult-to-reach nerve bundle entering the spinal cord. The wires from the
microelectrode array are led out through the skin to a small electrical conductor. The procedure
allows simultaneous recordings from many sensory nerves during normal motor activities such
as walking. A digital camera tracks the position of the leg, and a mathematical analysis relates!
The sensory activity to leg movement. The investigators found that fewer than 10 neurons are
needed to accurately predict the path of the leg. This finding is encouraging because it suggests
that a small number of neurons could provide the feedback signals needed to control a
prosthetic device.
"The principle of operation of the Brain Gate Neural Interface System is that with intact
brain function, neural signals are generated even though they are not sent to the arms,
hands and legs. These signals are interpreted by the System and a cursor is shown to the
user on a computer screen that provides an alternate "Brain Gate pathway". The user
can use that cursor to control the computer, just as a mouse is used".
(From Forbidden Planet 1956)
Cyber kinetics has plans to implant the devices in 4 more subjects; the company cautions that
Brain Gate is an investigational device for clinical testing only. It is not an approved device.
Development:-
Experiments were performed on dogs who were raised confined in cages. When released, the
dogs were excited, constantly ran around, and required several attempts to learn to avoid pain.
When pain such as a pinch or contact with a burning match was encountered, the animals could
not take action to avoid the stimulus immediately. This finding seemed to demonstrate that pain
is understood and avoided only by experience- aversion to it is not
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inbuilt or automatic, and the organism has no way to know what will cause repeated pain
without a repeated experience.
Physiology:-
Afferent pain-receptive nerves, those that bring signals to the brain, comprise at least two kinds
of fibers - a fast, relatively thick, militated "A8" fiber that carries messages quickly with intense
pain, and a small, unmyelinated, slow "C" fiber that carries the longer-term throbbing and
chronic pain. Large-diameter Affix fibers are no nociceptive and inhibit the effects of firing by
A8 and C fibers. The central nervous system has centers at which pain stimuli can be regulated.
Some areas in the dorsal horn of the spinal cord that are involved in receiving pain stimuli from
A8 and C fibers, called laminate, also receive input from Ape fibers. In other parts of the
laminate, pain fibers also inhibit the effects of no nociceptive fibers, 'opening the gate'.
An inhibitory connection may exist with AP and C fibers, which may form a synapse on the
same projection neuron. The same neurons may also form synapses with an inhibitory
interneuron that also synapses on the projection neuron, reducing the chance that the latter will
fire and transmit pain stimuli to the brain. The C fiber's synapse would inhibit the inhibitory
interneuron, indirectly increasing the projection neuron's chance of firing. The Ape fiber, on
the other hand, forms an excitatory connection with the inhibitory interneuron, thus decreasing
the projection neuron's chance of firing (like the C fiber, the AP fiber also has an excitatory
connection on the projection neuron itself). Thus, depending on the relative rates of firing of
C and AP fibers, the firing of the no nociceptive fiber may inhibit the firing of the projection
neuron and the transmission of pain stimuli Gate control theory thus explains how stimulus that
activates only no nociceptive nerves can inhibit pain. The pain seems to be lessened when the
area is rubbed because activation of no nociceptive fibers inhibits the firing of nociceptive ones
in the laminate in transcutaneous electrical stimulation (TENS), no nociceptive fibers are
selectively stimulated with electrodes in order to produce this effect and thereby lessen pain.
Afferent pathways interfere with each other constructively, so that the brain can control me the
degree of pain that is perceived, based on which pain stimuli are to be ignored to pursue J
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potential gains. The brain determines which stimuli are profitable to ignore over time. Thus,
the brain controls the perception of pain quite directly, and can be "trained" to turn off forms
of pain that are not "useful". This understanding led Mazak to point out that pain is in the brain.
Brain-computer interface:-
A brain-computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a direct neural interface or a brain-
machine interface, is a direct technological interface between a brain and a computer not
requiring any motor output from the user. That is, neural impulses in the brain are intercepted
and used to control an electronic device. This is a rather broad, ill-defined term used to describe
many versions of conventional and theoretical interfaces. For purposes of this term, the word
brain is understood to imply the physical brain of an organic life form and computer is
understood to imply a mechanical/technological processing/computational device. These
semantic notations are crucial in the contemplation of a direct brain-computer interface, as there
is great debate in the philosophy of mind regarding the reduction of consciousness and mind to
the physical qualities of the brain. Because of cortical plasticity, the brain is likely to adapt
during learning to operate a BCI.
Neuroprosthetics:-
Simple brain-computer interfaces already exist in the form of neuroprosthetics, with a great
deal of neuroscience, robotics, and computer science research currently dedicated to furthering
these technologies. Recent achievements demonstrate that it is currently possible to implement
crude brain-computer interfaces (brain dishes) that allow in vitro neuronal clusters to directly
control computers. Laboratories led by investigators Andrew Schwartz (U. Pittsburgh), Richard
Andersen (Caltech), Miguel Nicolle’s (Duke), and John Donoghue (Brown University) have
all successfully used a variety of algorithms, including the vector sum of motor cortical neuron
spiking, to record directly from the cortex of monkeys to operate a BCI. This design allowed
an I monkey to navigate a computer cursor on screen, as well as command a robotic arm to
perform simple tasks, simply by thinking about moving the cursor without any motor output
from the monkey.
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Dr.John Donoghue
Studies that developed algorithms to reconstruct movements from the activity of motor cortex
neurons date back to the 1970s. Work by groups led by Schmidt, Fitz, and Baker in the 1970s
established that monkeys could quickly achieve voluntary control over the firing rate of
individual neurons in primary motor cortex under closed-loop operant conditioning. Phillip
Kennedy and colleagues built the first wireless, intracortical brain-computer interface by
implanting neurotropic cone electrodes first into monkeys and then into the brains of paralyzed
patients. Several groups have explored real-time reconstruction of more complex motor
parameters using recordings from neural ensembles, including research groups lead by Miguel
Nicolle’s, John Donoghue, Andrew Schwartz, Richard Andersen and more recently Krishna
Shiny, Nacho Hatsopoulos, Ad Earthen, Elion Vaidya, Lee Miller, Andrew Flagg, Dawn
Taylor, and Eric Leichardt.
BCIs in monkeys.
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Nicholas Hatsopoulos Jeff Stable Judy Hackett
There has been explosive development in BCIs since the mid-1990s. Miguel Nicolle’s has been
a prominent proponent of multi-unit, multi-area recordings from neural ensembles to obtain
high-quality neuronal signals to drive a BCI. After conducting initial studies in rats during the
1990s, Nicolle’s and his colleagues started to develop BCIs that decoded brain activity in
monkeys and used it to reproduce monkey movements in robotic arms. Monkeys have
advanced reaching and grasping abilities and good hand manipulation skills making the ideal
test subjects for this kind of work.
Nicolle’s' group conducted their initial primate experiments using owl monkeys. By 2000, they
had gained experience in implanting owl monkeys with electrode arrays in multiple < brain
areas and built a BCI that reproduced monkey movements while the monkey operated a joystick
or reached for food.
Later experiments led by Miguel Nicolle’s on rhesus monkeys succeeded in closing the loop.
Rhesus monkeys are also considered to be better models for human neurophysiology than owl
monkeys. The monkeys were trained to reach and grasp objects on a computer screen by
manipulating a joystick .Their BCI used velocity predictions to control reaching movements.
The BCI simultaneously predicted hand gripping force. Reaching and grasping was produced
by a robot, which remained invisible to the monkeys. The feedback of the robot's performance
was provided by a visual display. Later, the monkeys learned to control the robots directly
using their implants while directly viewing the movement of the arm.
Other leading labs that develop BCIs and neuroprosthetic decoding algorithms include John
Donoghue from Brown University, Andrew Schwartz from the University of Pittsburgh and
Richard Andersen from Caltech. Although these researchers initially could not record from as
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many neurons as Nicolle’s and coworkers (15-30 neurons versus 50-200 neurons), they were
able to make important advances. A study by Donoghue's group reported that monkeys were
able to use the team's BCI without training to track visual targets on a computer screen.
Schwartz's group created a BCI for three-dimensional tracking (Taylor et al., 2002). Andersen's
group incorporated in their BMI design cognitive signals recorded in the posterior parietal
cortex, such as encoding of reaching the target and anticipated reward. John Donoghue and
Nacho Hatsopoulos also took this research to the business arena by starting Cyber kinetics, the
company that puts development of practical BCIs for humans as its major goal.
In addition to predicting kinematic and kinetic parameters of limb movements, BCIs that
predict electromyography activity of muscles are being developed (Santucci et al. 2005). Such
BCIs could be used in neuroprosthetic devices that restore mobility in paralyzed limbs by
electrical stimulation of muscles.
A brain–computer interface (BCI), often called a mind-machine interface (MMI), or sometimes
called a direct neural interface or a brain–machine interface (BMI), is a direct communication
pathway between the brain and an external device. BCIs are often directed at assisting,
augmenting, or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions.
Research on BCIs began in the 1970s at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA.The
papers published after this research also mark the first appearance of the expression brain–
computer interface in scientific literature.
The field of BCI research and development has since focused primarily on neuroprosthetics
applications that aim at restoring damaged hearing, sight and movement. Thanks to the
remarkable cortical plasticity of the brain, signals from implanted prostheses can, after
adaptation, be handled by the brain like natural sensor or effector channels. Following years of
animal experimentation, the first neuroprosthetic devices implanted in humans appeared in the
mid-1990s.
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2. WORKING:
Operation of the BCI system is not simply listening the EEG of user in a way that let’s tap this
EEG in and listen what happens. The user usually generates some sort of mental activity pattern
that is later detected and classified.
PREPROCESSING:
The raw EEG signal requires some preprocessing before the feature extraction. This
preprocessing includes removing unnecessary frequency bands, averaging the current brain
activity level, transforming the measured scalp potentials to cortex potentials and demising.
Frequency bands of the EEG:
.
DETECTION:
The detection of the input from the user and them translating it into an action could be
considered as key part of any BCI system. This detection means to try to find out these mental
tasks from the EEG signal. It can be done in time-domain, e.g. by. Comparing
amplitudes of the EEG and in frequency-domain. This involves usually digital signal
processing for sampling and band pass filtering the signal, then calculating these time - or
frequency domain features and then classifying them. These classification algorithms include
simple comparison of amplitudes linear and non-linear equations and artificial neural networks.
By constant feedback from user to the system and vice versa, both partners gradually learn
more from each other and improve the overall performance.
CONTROL:
The final part consists of applying the will of the user to the used application. The user chooses
an action by controlling his brain activity, which is then detected and classified to
corresponding action. Feedback is provided to user by audio-visual means e.g. when typing
with virtual keyboard, letter appears to the message box etc.
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TRAINING:
The training is the part where the user adapts to the BCI system. This training begins with very
simple exercises where the user is familiarized with mental activity which is used to relay the
information to the computer. Motivation, frustration, fatigue, etc. apply also here and their
effect should be taken into consideration when planning the training procedures
BIO FEEDBACK:
The definition of the biofeedback is biological information which is returned to the source that
created it, so that source can understand it and have control over it. This biofeedback in BCI
systems is usually provided by visually, e.g. the user sees cursor moving up or down or letter
being selected from the alphabet.
A boon to the paralyzed –Brain Gate Neural Interface System
The first patient, Matthew Nagle, a 25-year-old Massachusetts man with a severe spinal cord
injury, has been paralyzed from the neck down since 2001. Nagle is unable to move his arms
and legs after he was stabbed in the neck. During 57 sessions, at New England Sinai Hospital
and Rehabilitation Center, Nagle learned to open simulated e-mail, draw circular shapes using
a paint program on the computer and play a simple videogame, "neural Pong," using
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only his thoughts. He could change the channel and adjust the volume on a television, even
while conversing. He was ultimately able to open and close the fingers of a prosthetic hand and
use a robotic limb to grasp and move objects. Despite a decline in neural signals after few
months, Nagle remained an active participant in the trial and continued to aid the clinical team
in producing valuable feedback concerning the Brain Gate` technology.
Fig 7. Mathew Nagle
NAGLE’S STATEMENT:
“I can't put it into words. It's just—I use my brain. I just thought it. I said, "Cursor go up to the top right." And it
did, and now I can control it all over the screen. It will give me a sense of independence.”
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3. APPLICATIONS:
 In classification of EEG signal.
 In multimedia communication.
 In evaluation of spike detection algorithms.
 Actuated control of mobile robot by human EEG.
 As a brain controlled switch for asynchronous control.
 In evaluating the machine learning algorithms.
Fig 8. Applications
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4. CASE STUDY:
The robotic arm clutched a glass and swung it over a series of coloured dots that resembled a
Twister game board. Behind it, a woman sat entirely immobile in a wheelchair. Slowly, the
arm put the glass down, narrowly missing one of the dots. "She's doing that!" exclaims
Professor John Donoghue, watching a video of the scene on his office computer – though the
woman onscreen had not moved at all. "She actually has the arm under her control," he says,
beaming with pride. "We told her to put the glass down on that dot."
The woman, who is almost completely paralysed, was using Donoghue's groundbreaking
technology to control the robot arm using only her thoughts. Called Brain Gate, the device is
implanted into her brain and hooked up to a computer to which she sends mental commands.
The video played on, giving Donoghue, a silver-haired and neatly bearded man of 62, even
more reason to feel pleased. The patient was not satisfied with her near miss and the robot arm
lifted the glass again. After a brief hover, the arm positioned the glass on the dot.
Fig 9. The Brain Sensor

The tiny Brain Gate sensor. Photograph: Chitosan Suzuki/AP this is the remarkable worldof
the brain-computer interface, or BCI, of which Brain Gate is one of the leading devices and
Donoghue one of its most successful pioneers. It is a branch of science exploring how
computers and the human brain can be meshed together. It sounds like science fiction (and can
look like it too), but it is motivated by a desire to help chronically injured people. They include
those who have lost limbs, people with Lou Gehrig's disease, or those who have been paralysed
by severe spinal-cord injuries. But the group of people it might help the most are
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those whom medicine assumed were beyond all hope: sufferers of "locked-in syndrome". These
are often stroke victims whose perfectly healthy minds end up trapped inside bodies that can
no longer move. The most famous example was French magazine editor Jean- Dominique Baby
who managed to dictate a memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, by blinking one eye. In
the book, Baby, who died in 1997 shortly after the book was published, described the prison
his body had become for a mind that still worked normally. Donoghue believes that Brain Gate
would have opened Baby’s prison door, even if just a little. "I would have every expectation
that if we had put Brain Gate in his brain, it would have immediately started giving us signals,"
Donoghue says. Donoghue and his team have devoted years of research to Brain Gate, first
successfully testing the technology on monkeys and then moving to a groundbreaking set of
clinical trials using human subjects. Now the project is involved with a second set of human
trials, pushing the technology to see how far it goes and trying to miniaturise it and make it
wireless for a better fit in the brain. Brain Gate’s concept is simple. It posits that the problem
for most patients does not lie in the parts of the brain that control movement, but with the fact
that the pathways connecting the brain to the rest of the body, such as the spinal cord, have
been broken. Brain Gate plugs into the brain, picks up the right neural signals and beams them
into a computer where they are translated into moving a cursor or controlling a computer
keyboard. By this means, paralysed people can move a robot arm or drive their own wheelchair,
just by thinking about it.In his book Baby called his immobilised body a diving bell and his
mind a butterfly trapped inside. He described his sadness at being unable to talk back when his
loved ones spoke to him on the phone. "How dearly I would love to be able to respond with
something other than silence to those tender calls," he wrote. The woman on the video that
Donoghue just played has almost the exact same condition Baby had. Now she is able to talk
to Donoghue over the internet, moving a cursor over a keyboard with her mind and
communicating much faster than Baby did.
Donoghue works from inside a rambling old mansion perched on top of a hill. But the offices
of the Brown Institute for Brain Science are not really the stuff of old horror movies. The
pleasant-looking building is part of Brown University in the pretty college town of Providence,
Rhode Island, on the New England coast.
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It is here that he and his team are decoding the language of the human brain. This language is
made up of electronic signals fired by billions of neurons and it controls everything from our
ability to move, to think, to remember and even our consciousness itself. Donoghue's genius
was to develop a deceptively small device that can tap directly into the brain and pick up those
signals for a computer to translate them. Gold wires are implanted into the brain's tissue at the
motor cortex, which controls movement. Those wires feed back to a tiny array – an information
storage device – attached to a "pedestal" in the skull. Another wire feeds from the array into a
computer. A test subject with Brain Gate looks like they have a large plug coming out the top
of their heads. Or, as Donoghue's son once described it, they resemble the "human batteries" in
The Matrix.
Brain Gate’s highly advanced computer programs are able to decode the neuron signals picked
up by the wires and translate them into the subject's desired movement. In crude terms, it is a
form of mind-reading based on the idea that thinking about moving a cursor to the right will
generate detectably different brain signals than thinking about moving it to the left.
Donoghue talks enthusiastically of one day hooking up Brain Gate to a system of electronic
stimulators plugged into the muscles of the arm or legs. That would open up the prospect of
patients moving not just a cursor or their wheelchair, but their own bodies. "We are working
on a system where there is a stimulator in another part of the body wired to the muscle, and
when it's activated you can get opening and closing of the hand and movement of the arm."
Nagle rapidly became a poster boy for Brain Gate, eventually learning to play simple computer
games, operate a TV and send and receive emails. Sadly, he died in 2007 of an infection. "It
was awful. Just awful when Matt died.
KHUSHBOO DESAI 25
5. ADVANTAGE:
 Controlling remote devices

 Making and receiving telephone calls
 Accessing the internet.
 Turn on or off the lights
 Control robotics arm
 Watch and control television
 Use the PC
 Locking or unlocking doors
 Motorized wheelchair
KHUSHBOO DESAI 26
6. DISADVANTAGES:
 Expensive
 Ricky surgery
 Not Wireless yet
 Difficulty in adaptation and learning.
 Limitation in information transform rate. The latest technology is 20
bits/min.
KHUSHBOO DESAI 27
7. FUTURE SCOPE:
 Enable individuals with paralysis to use e-mail and telephones to communicate.

 Provide access to environmental controls, such as bed positioning, television, lights,
 And thermostats through a desktop application.
 Improve mobility by interfacing with powered wheelchairs.
 Provide patients with the ability to adjust their body position to avoid pressure sores.
 Facilitate control over all of these actions and a range of other software and
 external device applications through a single, universal integrated interface
Cyber kinetics has a vision, CEO Tim Surge nor explained to Gizmo, but it is not promising
"miracle cures", or that quadriplegic people will be able to walk again - yet. Their primary goal
is to help restore many activities of daily living that are impossible for paralyzed people and to
provide a platform for the development of a wide range of other assistive devices.
"Today quadriplegic people are satisfied if they get a rudimentary connection to the outside
world. What we're trying to give them is a connection that is as good and fast as using their
hands. We're going to teach them to think about moving the cursor using the part of the brain
that usually controls the arms to push keys and create, if you will, a mental device that can
input information into a computer. That is the first application, a kind of prosthetic, if you will.
Then it is possible to use the computer to control a robot arm or their own arm, but that would
be down the road."
KHUSHBOO DESAI 28
8. CONCLUSION:
The idea of moving robots or prosthetic devices not by manual control, but by mere “thinking”
(i.e., the brain activity of human subjects) has been a fascinated approach. Medical cures are
unavailable for many forms of neural and muscular paralysis. The enormity of the deficits
caused by paralysis is a strong motivation to pursue BMI solutions. So this idea helps many
patients to control the prosthetic devices of their own by simply thinking about the task. This
technology is well supported by the latest fields of Biomedical Instrumentation,
Microelectronics, signal processing, Artificial Neural Networks and Robotics which has
overwhelming developments. Hope these systems will be effectively implemented for many
biomedical applications.
 According to the Cyber kinetics' website, two patients have been implanted with the
Brain Gate system.
 Using the system, called Brain Gate, the patient can read e-mail, play video games, turn
lights on or off and change channels or adjust the volume of a television set.
 In early test sessions, the patient was able to control the TV and carry on a conversation
and move his head at the same time.
 Brain Gate can help paralyzed people move by controlling their own electric
wheelchairs, communicate by using e-mail and Internet-based phone systems, and be
independent by controlling items such as televisions and thermostats.
 Finally BRAIN GATE has proved to be a boon for paralyzed patient.
KHUSHBOO DESAI 29
9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
9.1 Book
 How the Brain Is Shaping the Future of the Internet
9.2 Websites
 www.cyberkineticsinc.com,
 http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66259,00.html
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLymwjTMC_Y
 www.howstuffworks.com
KHUSHBOO DESAI 30

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R. K.

DESAI ACHCHHARIWALA COLLEGE OF COMPUTER & APPLIED SCIENCE

1.4 Brain Computer Interface 12

BRAIN GATE TECHNOLOGY

Brain and Neurons

Neurons and Nervous system

How does the brain control motor function work?

How does this communication happen?

being sent to the arms, hands and legs.

Conjunction with the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University.

Fig 1. Experiment on rat

In the 1980s, Apostol’s Georgopoulos at Johns Hopkins University found a mathematical

Fig 2. Diagram of the BCI

Fig 3. Brain Computer Interface

Fig 4. Brain Gate Technology

Fig 5. Nuero Chip

Fig 6. Signal Processing

1.4 BRAIN-COMPUTER INTERFACE

Nicholas Hatsopoulos Jeff Stable Judy Hackett

A boon to the paralyzed –Brain Gate Neural Interface System

Fig 7. Mathew Nagle

 In evaluation of spike detection algorithms.

 Actuated control of mobile robot by human EEG.

 As a brain controlled switch for asynchronous control.

 In evaluating the machine learning algorithms.

Fig 9. The Brain Sensor

 Controlling remote devices

 Enable individuals with paralysis to use e-mail and telephones to communicate.

 How the Brain Is Shaping the Future of the Internet

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