Smart Industry No.1 2022

source ©: UPMC, Pitt Health Science
he says. No two brains are identical
and they can produce a broad
range of electrical responses. The
challenge, he believes, is understanding
how to interpret those
responses and fit that knowledge
into other evidence and, thereby,
enhance our means of interacting.
Coopersmith’s other aspiration is
to see BCI developed by neutral
parties rather than big, for-profit
enterprises that may be tempted
to use what they learn to supercharge
their marketing. “The risk is
both for some upstart looking to
become the next Facebook/Meta,
as well as Meta itself attempting to
gain even more intimate access to
our thought patterns,” he says. “We
see this [approach to BCI] as aligning
with the goals of a Web3 or Web
3.0 that is more decentralised than
what we have today.”
For now, BCI is still mostly useful
for people who have some degree
of diminished agency, for example
those dealing with paralysis, but
here, too, targets are shifting. “We
don’t know how we will define
agency in 20 to 50 years; we went
from a 12-second flight on a beach
[the Wright brothers, 1903) to landing
on the moon [1969], events
separated by just 66 years,” Coopersmith
notes. “It is hubristic to
predict what BCI will do.” Nonetheless,
it seems likely that human beings
will increasingly interact with
the world and each other through
the mediation of technology.
Pittsburgh's
RNEL
lab is investigating
the feasibility
of using
intracortical
microelectrode
arrays implanted
in motor cortex
for providing
high degree of
freedom control
of a robotic arm.
The pandemic
accelerated
our plans for
in-home testing
but this has
been a goal for
a long time.
Jennifer L. Collinger
University of Pittsburgh
Rehab Neural Engineering
Labs (RNEL)
The direction things are heading is
obvious. In May of this year, a team
of neural engineers at the University
of Pittsburgh’s Rehab Neural
Engineering Labs (RNEL) published
a proof-of-principle for a bidirectional
BCI – a type of BCI that enables
not just data reading but also
provides feedback through data
writing abilities.
Taking Control
In other words, it enables patients
with paralysis to control a rosource
©: UPMC, Pitt Health Science
source ©: University of Pittsburgh, Rehab Neural Engineering Labs
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