Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States.
T & C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States.
Elife. 2018 Apr 10;7:e32904. doi: 10.7554/eLife.32904.
Pioneering work with nonhuman primates and recent human studies established intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) in primary somatosensory cortex (S1) as a method of inducing discriminable artificial sensation. However, these artificial sensations do not yet provide the breadth of cutaneous and proprioceptive percepts available through natural stimulation. In a tetraplegic human with two microelectrode arrays implanted in S1, we report replicable elicitations of sensations in both the cutaneous and proprioceptive modalities localized to the contralateral arm, dependent on both amplitude and frequency of stimulation. Furthermore, we found a subset of electrodes that exhibited multimodal properties, and that proprioceptive percepts on these electrodes were associated with higher amplitudes, irrespective of the frequency. These novel results demonstrate the ability to provide naturalistic percepts through ICMS that can more closely mimic the body's natural physiological capabilities. Furthermore, delivering both cutaneous and proprioceptive sensations through artificial somatosensory feedback could improve performance and embodiment in brain-machine interfaces.
利用非人类灵长类动物进行的开创性工作和最近的人类研究表明，皮质内微刺激（ICMS）在初级体感皮层（S1）中作为一种诱导可分辨人工感觉的方法。然而，这些人工感觉还没有提供通过自然刺激获得的广泛的皮肤和本体感觉知觉。在一名患有四肢瘫痪的患者中，我们在 S1 中植入了两个微电极阵列，报告了可复制的对位于对侧手臂的皮肤和本体感觉感觉的诱发，这取决于刺激的幅度和频率。此外，我们发现了一组具有多模态特性的电极，这些电极上的本体感觉知觉与较高的振幅有关，而与频率无关。这些新的结果表明，通过能够更接近模拟身体自然生理能力的 ICMS 提供自然知觉的能力。此外，通过人工感觉反馈传递皮肤和本体感觉感觉可以提高脑机接口的性能和体现。
