Here’s a great story in the NY Times about how the Kuiken Arm technology has been progressing and expanding beyond the original patient. Seems its gotten quite sophisticated.
Articles of Interest
Emotiv – Brain Controlled Video Games
Apparently, the much ballyhooed brain driven video game controller is too slow and noisy and … lame … to be of any practical use… Here’s the link.
High Tech Teaching
Would you be more likely to attend lecture if you classes were run like this? Discuss…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/us/13physics.html
Brain Controlled Toys
Two brain controlled toys have been demonstrated at the 2009 consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. The reviews aren’t exactly rave, but the concept is neat and I’ll bet we’ll see more and better versions of these down the line. I first read about these here.
Matlab Coding Tips
Here are two great articles from the Mathworks site. I wasn’t aware that Matlab supported object oriented programming. I foresee a giant time-suck in my immediate future as I try to master this new discovery. The “pitfalls” article is also very handy:
Matlab Object Oriented Programming (click here)
Matlab Common Pitfalls (click here)
Spinal Cord Stimulation
Here is an interesting article from IEEE Spectrum on Advanced Neuromodulation Systems’ spinal pacemaker that is being used to fight chronic pain. Click here for the full story.
Brain Damage
Here is an excellent article from the Washingtonian magazine about a very intelligent woman who was in a very minor fender bender car accident. Although there was hardly any damage to her car, her brain was injured and as a result she had severe chronic problems with memory and concentration. I am constantly amazed by [...]
BMI Breakthrough
Here is an interesting article summarizing some exciting new research from the Fetz lab at the University of Washington. They’ve gotten a monkey to control paralyzed wrist muscles using signals from the motor cortex. The summary article appears in IEEE Spectrum; the research itself was published in Nature.
Master’s Thesis Information
inPublic
Introduction
This document is a brief introduction to the Master’s Thesis for Engineering students at Temple. Disclaimer: This document is incomplete! You are ultimately responsible for making sure you meet all the thesis criteria. If something important has been missed, please feel free to edit this document yourself, or to email Dr. Obeid (iobeid@temple.edu) with the [...]
McKibben Arm – Notes
University of Washington Biorobotics Lab
Chou CP, Hannaford B. Study of Human Forearm Posture Maintenance With a Physiologically Based Robotic Arm and Spinal Level Neural Controller, Biol Cybern. 76(4), 1997
McKibben muscles have many properties in common with the human arm
Feedback is provided by mechanical muscle spindles (see Marbot & Hannaford 1993) and force sensors which mimic [...]
Kuiken Arm
This page is a listing of external articles relevant to the Kuiken prosthetic arm under development.
Sensitive Synthetic Skin in the Works for Prosthetic Arms
Protected: Obeid Misc Lab Notes
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Functional Electrical Stimulation Society 2007
The November 14, 2007 Reading Group was spent discussing the 2007 meeting of the International Functional Electrical Stimulation Society that was attended by Rich, Nadia, and Dr. Obeid. Here are some of the topics we learned about that we found interesting:
Integration of Neuromuscular Electrical Stimulation Approaches into Clinical Practice
Dave Hutchinson, PT, Doctoral Candidate, MS, ECS [...]
Large-Scale Neural Simulation
Intro
Here are a list of resources for large scale neural simulations. I am particularly interested in knowing if there is any value in trying to get the NEURON platform to run as a massively parallel job on an FPGA or even a family of interconnected FPGAs. It would seem like simulating large populations of neurons [...]
Scholarship & Grant Opportunities
inPublic
Scholarships & Fellowships:
DoD SMART – App was due 12/17/07
NDSEG – App due 1/7/08
Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) – Not accepting apps for fiscal 2008
National Research Service Awards for Individual Predoctoral Fellows
Grants
NIH R21 for Exploratory Innovations in Biomedical Computational Science and Technology
NIH R21 for Neurotechnology Research, Development, and Enhancement
NIH [...]
Amazing Brain Related Videos
A blind teenager who can “see” through echo-location
Another video about human echo-location
A blind woman who can “see” through hearing
A man with a visual cortex prosthesis
Learning to “see” through your tongue
Deep brain stimulation part 1 and part 2
Using a brain-reading controller to manipulate a video game
The Mindball game that uses EEG bio-feedback. Here we see Regis [...]
Blogs Worth Reading
Here are some blogs worth reading … I will update this list periodically.
Ed Boyden
Direct Neural Interface
Neurodudes
Institute of Neuromorphic Engineers
Rewiring Neuroscience
Pain Medications
At the 10/3/2007 meeting, we resolved to get a better idea about how certain pain medications work. Here are some links to get us started. Other links are welcome:
Aspirin
Ibuprofen
These aren’t pain meds, but their mechanism of actions will still be applicable to our conversation:
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)
Monoamine oxidase inhibitor
Amended 10/22/2007 by Friendlich
Pain medications [...]
The Wired Brain
The following are articles from wired.com from a series called Wires in the Brain:
Wires in the Brain
Deep Brain Stimulator Surgery – first person account
A cochlear implant patient’s quest to hear Bolero
A story about a cortically-based visual prosthesis
A quadriplegic controls a cursor just by thinking about it
Vagal Nerve Stimulators are curing an array of maladies
A tongue-in-cheek [...]
Deep Brain Stimulation
Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is a rapidly expanding therapy where stimulating electrodes are placed in the brain or around the vagus nerve. DBS is being used to treat (or soon will be) epilepsy, Parkinson’s, dystonia, depression, pain, obesity, and Tourette’s. This article in Wired gives some excellent background. There are also a number of [...]
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Categories
Recent Entries
- NY Times Article – Prosthetic Arms that Listen to the Brain
- Emotiv – Brain Controlled Video Games
- High Tech Teaching
- Brain Controlled Toys
- Matlab Coding Tips
- Spinal Cord Stimulation
- Brain Damage
- BMI Breakthrough
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