Max
12-13-2004, 10:41 AM
Spinal-Cord Chip Implants Underway
12.13.04 Total posts: 1
By Natalie Goel
You may not think you have much in common with the lamprey eel, arguably the most primitive vertebrate, but the truth is, it's got your back. Though the bones are different, the neural components of a lamprey eel's spinal cord are much the same as humans' but are simpler and easier to understand. By studying these animals, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland hope to develop an implantable chip, replicating spinal-cord nerves, which could someday help people with spinal-cord injuries walk again.
ADVERTISEMENT When a person has a spinal-cord injury, the nerve bundles below the spinal column are generally still intact. The problem is that the brain can no longer send them instructions to fire or stop firing. The implantable chip being developed-measuring just 4 mm by 4 mm, and requiring just 10 to 20 microwatts of power-attempts to control them in place of the brain. "We let the spinal cord do its thing, we just control circuits that make that spinal cord do its thing," says lead researcher Ralph Etienne-Cummings, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Johns Hopkins.
Etienne-Cummings says designing the chip isn't the hard part of the project; understanding and controlling the lamprey eel's spinal cord is. He is working with University of Maryland biology professor Avis H. Cohen, a neuromorphic engineer who specializing in systems and motor control. Cohen has been studying spinal-cord regeneration in lampreys since 1977.
"Designing the chip is not that difficult," Etienne-Cummings says. "It is a very standard technology that has been around for a long time, used to develop microprocessors. The technical difficulty is in understanding the spinal cord, where to stimulate it, and so on. If you understand the organism, then you can replicate that in some sense in silicon."
Robotics Product Guide
The chip contains a number of silicon circuits that behave the same way neurons do. For now, these neurons are connected together and integrated into motors that control walking in robots. Iguana Robotics, Inc. president M. Anthony Lewis is collaborating on this part of the project. The researchers will continue to study lamprey eels until they have enough detail to make a good model of its neurons on the silicon chip.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1739960,00.asp
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12.13.04 Total posts: 1
By Natalie Goel
You may not think you have much in common with the lamprey eel, arguably the most primitive vertebrate, but the truth is, it's got your back. Though the bones are different, the neural components of a lamprey eel's spinal cord are much the same as humans' but are simpler and easier to understand. By studying these animals, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland hope to develop an implantable chip, replicating spinal-cord nerves, which could someday help people with spinal-cord injuries walk again.
ADVERTISEMENT When a person has a spinal-cord injury, the nerve bundles below the spinal column are generally still intact. The problem is that the brain can no longer send them instructions to fire or stop firing. The implantable chip being developed-measuring just 4 mm by 4 mm, and requiring just 10 to 20 microwatts of power-attempts to control them in place of the brain. "We let the spinal cord do its thing, we just control circuits that make that spinal cord do its thing," says lead researcher Ralph Etienne-Cummings, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Johns Hopkins.
Etienne-Cummings says designing the chip isn't the hard part of the project; understanding and controlling the lamprey eel's spinal cord is. He is working with University of Maryland biology professor Avis H. Cohen, a neuromorphic engineer who specializing in systems and motor control. Cohen has been studying spinal-cord regeneration in lampreys since 1977.
"Designing the chip is not that difficult," Etienne-Cummings says. "It is a very standard technology that has been around for a long time, used to develop microprocessors. The technical difficulty is in understanding the spinal cord, where to stimulate it, and so on. If you understand the organism, then you can replicate that in some sense in silicon."
Robotics Product Guide
The chip contains a number of silicon circuits that behave the same way neurons do. For now, these neurons are connected together and integrated into motors that control walking in robots. Iguana Robotics, Inc. president M. Anthony Lewis is collaborating on this part of the project. The researchers will continue to study lamprey eels until they have enough detail to make a good model of its neurons on the silicon chip.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1739960,00.asp
http://stores.ebay.com/MAKSYM-Variety-Store