Rehab Neural Engineering Labs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Science. 2021 May 21;372(6544):831-836. doi: 10.1126/science.abd0380.
Prosthetic arms controlled by a brain-computer interface can enable people with tetraplegia to perform functional movements. However, vision provides limited feedback because information about grasping objects is best relayed through tactile feedback. We supplemented vision with tactile percepts evoked using a bidirectional brain-computer interface that records neural activity from the motor cortex and generates tactile sensations through intracortical microstimulation of the somatosensory cortex. This enabled a person with tetraplegia to substantially improve performance with a robotic limb; trial times on a clinical upper-limb assessment were reduced by half, from a median time of 20.9 to 10.2 seconds. Faster times were primarily due to less time spent attempting to grasp objects, revealing that mimicking known biological control principles results in task performance that is closer to able-bodied human abilities.
由脑机接口控制的假肢可以使四肢瘫痪的人进行功能性运动。然而，视觉提供的反馈有限，因为有关抓握物体的信息最好通过触觉反馈来传达。我们通过使用双向脑机接口来补充视觉，该接口记录来自运动皮层的神经活动，并通过对感觉皮层的皮层内微刺激来产生触觉感知。这使一位四肢瘫痪的人能够通过机器人肢体显著提高性能；在临床上肢评估中，试验时间从中位数 20.9 秒减少到 10.2 秒，减少了一半。更快的时间主要是由于尝试抓握物体的时间减少了，这表明模仿已知的生物控制原理会导致任务表现更接近健全人的能力。
