ASU FC S 04 - Center for Adaptive Neural Systems - Arizona State ...

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to mimic how our bodies’ own nervous system functions and use this
knowledge as the foundation for designing engineering systems. “The
goal is to get FDA approval for our devices,” said Jung. “It would be
the translation from an idea all the way up to a clinical application; the
concept of going from lab bench to bedside.”
The spinal cord creates electrical signals in order to get muscles to
contract, so by recording this electrical signal and measuring the biomechanical
movements generated by the contractions, they can reproduce
the signal to create a desired response. “It’s a matter of abstraction,”
said Jung. “We perform animal studies to understand how the
nervous system works, how it is affected by trauma and to understand
how our devices can interact with the nervous system.” Jung and
Abbas apply the results from these animal studies into designing
devices that help people with spinal cord injury regain function. “We
have studies going on that look at the idea of using electrical stimulation
to activate muscles in therapy to promote better recovery after
incomplete spinal cord injury,” said Abbas.
Another useful feature integrated into the control system is an adaptive
logic that responds to an individual’s rehabilitation program. “Much
of the research we are doing is on how we can improve the quality of
control by automatically adjusting the stimulation levels,” said Abbas.
“We’re refining the design and we’re doing animal studies and human
subjects testing behind this concept of adaptive control and electrical
stimulation to get better recovery after incomplete spinal cord injury,”
This approach is also being applied to help other patients with neurological
disabilities like Parkinson’s disease.
“There are some opportunities for using similar
types of approaches to develop systems to assist
people with stroke, or brain injury or Parkinson’s
disease,” said Abbas. He and his collaborators
from clinical sites around Phoenix are developing
new techniques to improve deep brain stimulation
systems, which are implants that alleviate the
tremors associated with Parkinson’s disease. “We
hope we can help shape the evolution of the next
generation of deep brain stimulation systems.”
James Abbas (above) with research students at
the Center for Rehabilitation Neuroscience and
Rehabilitation Engineering. Students (below)
demonstrate muscle rehabilitation using equipment
in the lab.
For more information on spinal cord
injury rehabilitation work, see
http://eas.asu.edu/~bme/new/.
IRA A. FULTON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING – SPRING 2004 23