October 13, 2003
In Pioneering Study, Monkey Think, Robot Do
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/13/science/13BRAI.html?th=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1
066047464-MXLmZSDUfYKQwnm96LQFYw
Monkeys that can move a robot arm with thoughts alone have brought the
merger of mind and machine one step closer.
In experiments at Duke University, implants in the monkeys' brains picked up
brain signals and sent them to a robotic arm, which carried out reaching and
grasping movements on a computer screen driven only by the monkeys'
thoughts.
The achievement is a significant advance in the continuing effort to devise
thought-controlled machines that could be a great benefit for people who are
paralyzed, or have lost control over their physical movements.
In previous experiments, some in the same laboratory at Duke, both humans
and monkeys have had their brains wired so they could move cursors on
computer screens just by thinking about it. And wired monkeys have moved
robot arms by making a motion with their own arms. The new research,
however, involves thought-controlled robotic action that does not depend on
physical movement by the monkey and that involves the complex muscular
activities of reaching and grasping.
The study is being published today in the inaugural issue of The Public
Library of Science, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that makes articles
available free of charge. The research team was led by Dr. Miguel A. L.
Nicolelis, a neurobiology professor and co-director of the Center for
Neuroengineering at Duke, in North Carolina. Dr. Nicolelis also did the
earlier research on monkeys and robot arms at Duke.
While other laboratories have helped monkeys use thoughts to move robots,
using different experimental designs, the Duke findings go furthest in the
sense that their robots were mentally assimilated into the animals' brains.
"For nearly completely paralyzed people, this promises to be a fantastic
boon," said Dr. Jon Kaas, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, who is familiar with Dr. Nicolelis's research. "A person could
control a computer or robot to do anything in real time, as fast as they can
think."
While experts agree that thought-controlled personal robots are many years
off, the Duke University team recently showed that humans produce brain
signals like those of the experimental monkeys.
"Monkeys not only use their brain activity to control a robot," said Dr.
John Chapin, a professor of physiology and pharmacology at the State
University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn. "They improve
their performance with time. The stunning thing is that we can now see how
this occurs, how neurons change their tuning as the monkey does different
tasks."
Dr. Nicolelis implanted tiny probes called microwires into several brain
regions of two rhesus monkeys. At first, each monkey learned to move a
joystick that controlled a cursor on a computer screen. When a ball
appeared, the animal had to move the cursor to the target to earn a drink of
juice. Researchers collected electrical patterns from the monkey's brain as
it performed the tasks.
After the monkey became skilled at the exercise, the scientists disconnected
the joystick. At first, the monkey jiggled the stick and stared at the
screen, Dr. Nicolelis said. Even though the joystick was not working, the
monkey's reaching and grasping motor plans were being sent to a computer,
which translated those signals into movements on screen.
There was an "incredible moment" when the monkey realized that it could
guide the cursor and grasp an object on the screen just by thinking it, Dr.
Nicolelis said. The arm dropped. Muscles no longer contracted.
The final step was to divert brain signals to a computer model that
controlled the movements of a robot. The monkey continued to think the
movements but in doing so it now moved the robot arm directly, without a
joystick, which in turn directed movements of the cursor.
Controlling a shaky, jerky robot with thought is not easy, Dr. Nicolelis
said. When the robot is first added, the monkey's performance degrades. It
takes two days for the animal to learn the mechanical properties of the arm
and to incorporate its delays into motor planning areas.
"By the end of training, I would say that these monkeys sensed they were
reaching and grasping with their own arms instead of the robot arm," Dr.
Nicolelis said. "Every time we use a tool to interact with our environment,
such as a computer mouse, car or glasses, our brain assimilates properties
of the tool into neuronal space. Tools are appendages which are incorporated
into our body schema. As we develop new tools, we reshape our brains," he
said.

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