Technology to help the disabled/ Wiring the brain with implants

[The Human Cannonball]

Doctor here leading effort to help disabled

July 25, 2001

BY SANDRA GUY

A fascinating medical advance that's enabling people who have been paralyzed to communicate is being spearheaded by neurologist Roy Bakay of Chicago's Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center.

Bakay is a member of an institute at the medical center that's devoted to alternative brain-body interfaces.

If this terminology seems odd, it's because the latest research into opening the world to disabled people is dovetailing with advances in the computer field.

One of the latest advances, explained in wonderfully accessible language in the August issue of Wired magazine, involves surgically implanting electrodes in the brain of someone who can no longer communicate, such as a paraplegic or a stroke victim.

Implanted with the electrodes is a small piece of glass shaped like two narrow cones with a gold electrical contact glued inside. The space in the cones is filled with a special tissue culture.

The tissue culture is designed to ''attract'' brain cells. So when the brain cells meet the gold, the gold wires carry signals back out of the skull, where they are amplified.

The end goal is to enable the patient to think of moving, and, once his or her brain signals are interpreted, to use this mind-signaling to control a cursor on a computer screen.

Besides the marvel of such medical advances, there's a juicy controversy to go with it. The author of the article, John Hockenberry, himself the victim of a spinal cord injury, fears that the cortical implants' benefits are being overshadowed by the more inviting campaign for ''The Cure'' of spinal cord repair.

The Cure, with actor Christopher Reeve its celebrity advocate, competes for funding with the alternative interface research, which provides immediate, yet admittedly limited, progress.

Nevertheless, the National Institutes of Health is providing $1.1 million in seed funding for eight human tests of the electrode implants this coming year.

This is just an article I posted, I am still debating my opinion of this article if in that it would really help sci's down the line

John

Chicago

[Wise Young]

This is really quite puzzling. What could John Hockenberry be thinking about?

This electrode technology developed Backay is interesting and important but it has been going on for nearly 20 years. I first heard of this in the 1980's, when he was implanting glass capillaries in the brains of monkeys and showing that cortical neurons will send axons into the capillaries where they come into contact with gold wires. He was able to record from these neurons over long periods of time and this appeared to be a very promising approach to putting semi-permanent electrodes into the brain. The monkeys could be trained to control simple devices and computer interfaces by activating neurons in their cortex. A number of organizations have funded this work, including NIH. I think that a company is also involved. This device and the potential of interfacing the brain to computers has long been a subject of great interest to the computer industry and military. I am glad that it is being taken to humans, finally.

However, the comment by Hockenberry (if true) is very disconcerting. This technology does not conflict with spinal cord injury research or "cure" research. Why does he think that "cure" research will overshadow this technology? There is no competition. In fact, probably much more money is being spent of brain:computer interfaces than is being spent on spinal cord injury research. If there is a danger of overshadowing, it is the other way around. For decades now, almost all rehabilitation engineering research funding has been spent on devices that essentially substitute for function rather than restore or improve function. The entire functional electrical stimulation (FES) field was dominated by the use of computers to activate the muscles rather than how FES could improve the brain and spinal cord control of muscles.

Much as I like and respect John Hockenberry, I think that this comment is uncalled for. I only hope that he was misquoted or quoted out of context.

Wise.