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Docket #: S15-182

Online brain machine-interface auto-delete based on motor cortical activity

Stanford researchers at the Shenoy Lab have tested a method that can detect and predict the outcome of brain machine interface (BMI) tasks using motor cortical brain activity. It can improve performance of BMI by auto-deleting incorrect selections using a classifier on neural spiking activity from motor cortex to decode task outcome.
This method has been successfully implemented in an online non-human primate BMI experiment. In real time experiment with closed-loop BMI control, the team identified motor cortical neural signals indicative of task error occurrence. Task outcomes were detected in real time with 93% accuracy and upcoming task outcomes were predicted with 83% accuracy using neural activity alone. This novel strategy can help increase the performance and clinical viability of BMIs.

Stanford researchers develop brain-controlled typing for people with paralysis.

Stage of Research:

  • Proof-of-concept
  • The study described in the figure above showed that a signal correlated with task outcomes is present in motor cortex and can be used to increase the performance of BMIs.
  • Continued research to improve the method and test with human participants
  • Applications

    • Incorporate the algorithm in human brain machine interface (BMI) to increase performance (e.g., virtual keyboard typing rate).

    Advantages

    • Increased performance/typing rate by 20%
    • High accuracy – 93% accuracy for detecting task outcomes and 83% accuracy for predicting upcoming task outcomes in real time
    • Error detection is based on neural activity alone
    • Improves upon current BMI technology:
      • Current BMI only decode kinematic signals, not neural activity
      • Current BMI have reduced typing rates due to wrong characters and errors
    • Use of error signal for auto-delete can help increase the ease of use and clinical adoption of BMIs

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