A research team from the Yonsei University College of Medicine, including Dr. Choi Jae Young, have recently completed a neural implant surgery on a young female patient to help her regain lost hearing. Although the girl's brain functions normally, she has a damaged nerve that transmits auditory signals from her ear to her brain stem.

The implanted device converts sound into digital signal and transmits this to the brain stem and further processing in the brain. The details of the work is not clear in the posted media report below, and no published research with the results has yet been found by Neuron News (but, we'll post updates as soon as possible).

Presumably, the electrical information transmitted by the computer chip implant is being received by the brain, but the child's brain must first train itself to interpret the signals into meaningful patterns. The girl may have never before heard sound--let alone process and interpret sound--so, this work might also be an extremely interesting observation of how well the brain can take new electrical signals and integrate them successfully into a brain state that might be considered "normal" to another human who was born with complete hearing capabilities.

Will the girl hear differently, in some way, than other humans? Will we ever be able to determine if she is interpreting sounds in different ways, even if her brain figures out a way to process the signals and still interact with its environment "normally"?

The future of neurotechnology--or, the successful integration of the human brain with fabricated computing devices--is awfully dependent on poking sharp objects into the brain. This is quite invasive, and the human body certainly does not like foreign objects sticking into its soft tissue.

A polymer group at the University of Michigan is currently working on solutions to making neuro-probes a little softer to our neural mush in our head. By developing specialized polymer coatings for neural implants, they hope to minimize the neuronal damage cause by the implant. Even if localized scar tissue is inevitable, they are working on ways to electrically communicate across the scar layer to allow the implant to continue its electrical function.

An interesting new technology emerging from the research lab of Dr. Larry Cauller at University of Texas at Dallas might lead to new patient-guided treatments for direct control in pain management.

The work is now being further funded for commercial development through the start-up MicroTransponder, Inc. The device concept is an implanted wireless receiver that can stimulate nerve tissue in order to block pain signals before reaching the brain. This could be a major boon for people with chronic pain issues, which does affect a large percentage of people in the United States.

The group is still fine-tuning the technology and has a way to go for FDA approval, but they are certainly in an interesting position to master a major development for pain relief. How the body and brain responds to this direct internal stimulation might also lead to further understanding of neuron communication and function. It might also result in some interesting--if not undesirable--effects on how the body responds when it doesn't feel pain when, maybe, it should be feeling pain.

"Tiny Technology Packs a Pain-Relieving Wallop" :: UT Dallas News Center :: June 26, 2008 :: [ READ ]

Dr. James Weiland and his team have devised a successful electrical implant that stimulates healthy nerve cells in the retina of the eye in a calculated way to give the patient the sensation that light. The research device was designed to solve the specific vision problem of retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative condition that causes a person to gradually loose eye sight over time.

A video camera is directly connected to a 16 electrode chip that is interfaced directly into the retina. A special mini-computer analyzes the images from the camera, churns out some calculations, and controls a specific pattern of electrical stimulation to the neurons in the retina.

This implementation of a "bionic eye" does not actually reproduce the image of the surroundings onto the patient's retina, but fills in some of the dark gaps of vision by stimulating nerve cells to fool the brain into believing there is actual light coming from a specific location.

[ Read the article from EE Times ]

[ Visit the academic website heading up this research. ]

The Potter research group in the Laboratory for Neuroengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology is making grand strides with their work in building a "simple" moving robot that is controlled by living brain cells.

The group has successfully demonstrated the direct connection of rat neurons to a robotic device, which is then controlled by the electrical activity of the neurons. The robot used in this important study was built by K-Team S.A., a Swiss company that manufactures mobile minirobots for use in advanced education and research.

Brain cells extracted from a rat brain are dropped into a glass dish that is covered with metal electrodes. The cells settle in an uncontrolled way onto the contacts, and are kept alive (not a simple task!) so that the resulting electrical activity from the living cells may be detected and transmitted to the wiring of the robot.

A primary goal of this work is to figure out how these networks result in some physical activity, which then might lead to more clear understandings about how our brain works when we think, remember, and move our bodies.

The result? "It's alive! Alive!" Although, you'll have to believe the still picture on the linked website article, as no movies seem to be available at the time of this posting. This development seems quite exciting. On the other hand, the wife of this editor certainly does not like mice, and she might not appreciate minirobots controlled by mice brains. Well, with some advancements in science there inevitably come some downsides.

[ Read the article from EurekAlert! ]

05.14.2003 UPDATE:
[ Read the article from The New York Times ]

06.11.2003 UPDATE:
[ Read an article from e4Engineering.com ]

[ Learn more about Prof. Potter's work ]

Slate Magazine presents a special series on "Building a Better You"

The ultimate extension of neurotechnology promises to offer power interfaces between brain and computer providing enhancements to your body, which has already evolved into an amazing machine in and of itself.

Scientists, engineers, and even the US Department of Defence are working toward many goals to improve our body's mechanical characteristics (run down to the local market for a gallon of milk and be back before the commercial break is over) and mental abilities (oh, e=mc^2 is so trivial). These technological developments are already showing successful applications, and many more will appear in the next several decades, if not much sooner.

Read Slate Magazine's review of the current state of scientific progress in the business of upgrading your body--literally--to make you into a "better you".

Building a Better You
a special series from Slate Magazine

[ Read the introduction ]

[ Read about improving your eyes for SuperVision ]

(This series is still being written by Slate Magazine, so more links will be updated right here as they become available.)

It's still primitive, but the work coming from the Dobelle Institute is providing critical proof-of-principle results that prosthetic devices integrated directly with our brain can replace lost function.

This article is written in a loose "story-telling" way, which lends itself not only to an enjoyable read, but you are able to quickly see into the excitement and difficulty of this sort of technological progress. Read through this article, and discover how a "plugged in" blind man can see again.

Well, the blind man still can't really see exactly like people with "normal" vision. Instead, Dobelle's patients have their brain retrain itself to interpret special stimuli generated from a computer chip based on information from a video camera. This stimuli is directly input into the patient's brain via a series of connected wires.

The ability of the brain to quickly adapt to new inputs so that it can successfully function in its environment is one of the most amazing and most poorly understood features of our brain. Think that this "re-trainable feature" is crazy? Well, you can actually experience it yourself, as did the author in this article. You can read about how his own brain re-learned in a very short amount of time how to interpret new visual stimuli.

In the lab of Mark Humayun at the University of Southern California (see http://visionscience.usc.edu for more information), the author was given a special pair of computer-controlled glasses that distorted his vision. Through the special glasses the author could initially only see bright blobs of light. But, as the neurons in his brain began to work on these new inputs, his brain re-learned how to see!

Our brains are made up of dynamic squishy material. It is capable of many powerful and adaptable abilities, many of which we may never be able to personally experience. Trying on these glasses from Humayun's lab would be an incredible experience, and I hope to have the opportunity to try them on myself someday!

[Read the article from Wired Magazine]

Well, small scale bionic applications are actually being installed in a large number of people, primarily for medical conditions that fail to respond to traditional therapies. So, it will become increasingly more likely over the next decade that your neighbor will be "hard wired" in some way. This article from ZDNet News provides a nice objective overview of many ideas applications that are popping up in the neurotechnology industry. You should at least skim through the article, so that you'll be ready when your send over a house-warming pie to your new neighbor.

Be thoughtful regarding some of the applications, however. This suggestion is certainly not encouraging "dooms-day" reactions to bionics, but to be wary of new technology companies spitting out bionic chips for uses where alternate, cheaper, and more reasonable approaches are available.

Every human tends to be forgetful now-and-then. Our memories will become even worse if actual damage occurs to brain cells from a stroke or advanced Alzheimer's disease. One optimistic outlook for brain-implanted neuron devices is that they could be used to help keep our memories sharp, or at least replace the function of lost neurons critical for remembering the names of your loved ones.

Prof. Theodore Berger at the University of Southern California is working on developing circuits that can be used to fill a functional gap due to damaged neurons. Their interesting approach to developing "bionic" chips is to implant a silicon processor into the hippocampus to interface with existing neurons. (This part of the brain is considered to have a significant role in memory function.)

At the time of this article, the group has not demonstrated an actual implanted chip calculating away inside a living brain. Rather, they have mathematical models that have guided their chip's circuit design. Simulations show that these things might work, but it all depends on how well the initial models were set up. They also don't talk too much about how they plan to interface the silicon chip's electrodes with existing neurons in the brain. This will be the critical step for a successful implanted device. We'll keep a close, and excited eye on this group from USC!

OK, so they can't quite yet enjoy the subtle strokes of Monet, but they can see flashes of white light from their surroundings of which they must learn to interpret. This is still a fabulous development and a critical start to initiate more technological improvements towards restoring shape recognition and color sensitivity to the blind.

The current device takes images from a small camera mounted on special sunglasses. A computer processes the images and sends some electrical signals directly to the visual cortex (a chunk of brain in the back of your head). These visual system brain cells are stimulated in some unknown way, and the patient sees stars.

This is quite an interesting technique because it bypasses the eyes' input neurons, and sends information directly to the brain. Recent alternative techniques collect light focused on the retina at the back of the eye. Then the brain may interpret the information through estalished image processing neural patheways, just as if the eye were functioning normally.

A direct shot of visual information to the brain's visual cortex requires special training of the patients so that they may adopt an understanding of exactly how the pattern of white spots relate to the real world. So, this might not be an ubiquitous approach, but best for patients who have completely damaged or removed retinas from an injury.

[Read the article from CNN]

Optobionics is developing an artificial retina that is being used to help partially restore vision in people with age-related degeneration or retinal diseases.

A small silicon chip with 5,000 electrodes is implanted into the back of the eye. Each electrode transforms incoming light into electrochemical pulses that stimulate existing retinal cells. The first patients are now able to see more light, although cannot yet make out visual details.

This advancement follows a cochlear implant made by Advanced Bionics, which was installed last month in Cora Jean Kleppe, 73. She can now hear her grandchildren and function better in life.

The amazing part is the brain only needs a little bit of crude information to reconstruct the sounds or sights around it. These devices are not sending detailed information, but only rudimentary electrical signals based on light impinging on an electrode or a small microphone mounted on their head. Your brain can adapt its neuron network to properly interpret the environment based on whatever information it can scrounge from these sorts of devices. Don't be surprised if these first bionic patients experience improved responses over time.

This article from the San Francisco Chronical provides a nice overview of the history and current state of prosthetic devices and implants. The report makes the important distinction between what is reality and what is still fantasy for the "bionic human".

Don't forget our bodies are composed of living tissue, which doesn't like sitting near plastic and metal. This is the most difficult limitation at this time making the prospect of humans entirely re-composed of artificial parts very arduous.

Until we can build functioning devices out of the living tissue itself, don't expect seeing Bionic Woman walking around in your neighborhood any time soon.