Cortical Neural Prosthetics

Control of prostheses using cortical signals is based on three elements: chronic microelectrode arrays, extraction algorithms, and prosthetic effectors. Arrays of microelectrodes are permanently implanted in cerebral cortex. These arrays must record populations of single- and multiunit activity indefinitely. Information containing position and velocity correlates of animate movement needs to be extracted continuously in real time from the recorded activity. Prosthetic arms, the current effectors used in this work, need to have the agility and configuration of natural arms. Demonstrations using closed-loop control show that subjects change their neural activity to improve performance with these devices. Adaptive-learning algorithms that capitalize on these improvements show that this technology has the capability of restoring much of the arm movement lost with immobilizing deficits.