Milovanovic Ivana, Robinson Robert, Fetz Eberhard E, Moritz Chet T
Departments of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Physiology & Biophysics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA; Washington National Primate Research Center, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Brain Comput Interfaces (Abingdon). 2015;2(4):174-185. doi: 10.1080/2326263X.2015.1080961. Epub 2015 Sep 14.
Toward expanding the population of potential BCI users to the many individuals with lateralized cortical stroke, here we examined whether the cortical hemisphere controlling ongoing movements of the contralateral limb can simultaneously generate signals to control a BCI. A monkey was trained to perform a simultaneous BCI and manual control task designed to test whether one hemisphere could effectively differentiate its output and provide independent control of two tasks. Pairs of well-isolated single units were used to control a BCI cursor in one dimension, while isometric wrist torque of the contralateral forelimb controlled the cursor in a second dimension. The monkey could independently modulate cortical units and contralateral wrist torque regardless of the strength of directional tuning of the units controlling the BCI. When the presented targets required explicit decoupling of unit activity and wrist torque, directionally tuned units exhibited significantly less efficient cursor trajectories compared to when unit activity and wrist torque could remain correlated. The results indicate that neural activity from a single hemisphere can be effectively decoupled to simultaneously control a BCI and ongoing limb movement, suggesting that BCIs may be a viable future treatment for individuals with lateralized cortical stroke.
为了将潜在脑机接口（BCI）用户群体扩大到众多患有单侧皮质卒中的个体，我们在此研究了控制对侧肢体持续运动的皮质半球是否能同时产生信号来控制BCI。训练一只猴子执行一项同时进行的BCI和手动控制任务，该任务旨在测试一个半球是否能有效区分其输出并对两项任务提供独立控制。使用成对的高度隔离的单个神经元来在一个维度上控制BCI光标，而对侧前肢的等长腕部扭矩在第二个维度上控制光标。无论控制BCI的神经元的方向调谐强度如何，猴子都能独立调节皮质神经元和对侧腕部扭矩。当呈现的目标需要明确解耦神经元活动和腕部扭矩时，与神经元活动和腕部扭矩可以保持相关时相比，方向调谐的神经元表现出效率显著更低的光标轨迹。结果表明，来自单个半球的神经活动可以有效地解耦，以同时控制BCI和正在进行的肢体运动，这表明BCI可能是未来治疗单侧皮质卒中个体的一种可行方法。
