The first wireless, implantable, rechargeable, long-term brain-computer interface has been created by researchers at Brown University.
After 13 months of successful testing via monkeys and pigs, human testing will soon begin.
Extreme Tech notes that until now, BCIs (brain-computer interface aka mind-machine interface or MMI) — which allow for direct communication between the brain and an external device in order to assist, augment or repair human cognitive or sensory-motor functions — have been "bulky and tethered to a computer."
Such inhibitions keep the patient employing the BCI limited in his mobility. This in turn has limited real-world testing of BCIs in the past.
The wireless BCI developed by Brown's researchers, on the other hand, allows for the subject to move freely. This mobility and accessibility allows also for a significant increase in the amount of data (both in quantity and quality) that can be accrued from brain-to-computer interface.
"Instead of watching what happens when a monkey moves its arm, scientists can now analyze its brain activity during complex activity, such as foraging or social interaction," says Extreme Tech.
The BCI Brown has created is made from hermetically sealed titanium and rather resembles a pacemaker. Built into the BCI is a li-ion battery, an inductive/wireless charging loop, a chip that digitizes the signals from the subject's brain and an antenna for transmitting data to a computer in close proximity.
One hundred electrodes jut out from a small chip connected to the BCI, which, in the studies at Brown, was embedded in the somatosensory cortex (aka motor cortex). A hundred electrodes produce a great deal of information, and the BCI can transmit it all at 24Mbps over the 3.2 and 3.8GHz bands to a receiver a mere one meter away.
"The BCI's battery takes two hours to charge via wireless inductive charging, and then has enough juice to last for six hours of use," reports Extreme Tech.
Brown researchers are particularly interested in the BCIs low power needs, which run to 100 milliwatts. If the BCI is used in humans eventually — to help assist with, say, Alzheimer's — such a low power consumption would allow for easy, all-day use. Of course, the wireless charging does result in the BCI heating up quite a bit, thus resulting in the need for it being "mitigated by liquid cooling the area with chilled water during the recharge process and did not notably affect the animal's comfort."
Brown's BCI is a component of the university's BrainGate research group, which recently worked with paralyzed patients who were able to use a tethered BCI to move a robotic arm that would feed them.
Though the group has yet to seek approval for human usage of the wireless BCI, the device has been designed specifically for humans and thus the time is clearly coming that we, like our monkey and pig friends, will be able to engage an onboard brain computer, too. Take that, Google Glass!
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(Edited by Lois Heyman)
