Newly Developed Robotic Implants With Tactile Simulation Can Function On Touch Based Control

A team of bio-engineers from the University of Pittsburg Rehab Neural Engineering Labs have researched into detecting the aftereffects of brain simulation reacting to tactile sensation emulated from a receiver that works on a brain-controlled robotic implant. The experiment concluded with complimentary vision aids and artificial tactile perception decreases the time spent grasping and transferring objects from within a median of 20.9 seconds reduced to a mere 10.2 second. Day-to-day tasks are a breeze for many most able-bodied individuals. However, people with incomplete sensory and motor control can face certain difficulties if they are not provided with any of th external aid such as implants.

However, these tasks become more complicated and complex when the user operates a prosthetic arm. Participant in the study was implanted with tiny electrodes of array in the brain’s motor cortex and his somatosensory cortex – a region of the brain that deals with regulating sensory information. The electrode array allowed the participant to control the robotic arm with his mind while receiving tactile feedback in real-time. Tactile feedback relates to the feedback associated with neural circuits that operate when a spinal cord is intact. The participant was a being which was left without his arms rendered after a severe car crash.

The research is a step-ahead from the previous research paper which focused on simulating sensory region of the brain using tiny electrical pulses that were meant to simulate sensation within distinct regions of a person’s hand. This experiment was concluded with the fact that the participants in the previous use case lost feeling in their limbs. In the new research findings, the researchers concluded that reading the information relayed from the brain in order to control the movement of the implant by relaying information back to provide relayed sensory feedback. The individual in the experiment was asked to transfer various objects from a table to a raised platform. The researchers plan to add more valid evidence to their findings through various experimentations