An international research team led by scientists from Georgia Tech in the United States has created a wearable brain-machine interface that can read what a person imagines and convert them into commands for a wheelchair or a robotic hand.

According to the study published by this team, which was published in the journal "Advanced Science" and announced by the institute in an official statement on July 21, this new innovation can help people with many types of motor dysfunction or paralysis, or those who suffer Locked-in syndrome.

Locked-up syndrome is a pathological condition in which a person is awake and conscious, but is unable to verbally communicate with others because he has entered a state of complete paralysis of all voluntary muscles except for the muscles of the eyes.

Won Hong-yu of Georgia Institute of Technology and lead researcher on the study (Yurik Alert)

A mediator between the brain and the world!

Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are a method of direct communication between a human brain and a computer without the need to use other bodily organs as limbs. The interface allows a person to issue commands to an electronic device using only electrical brain activity.

This interface monitors, measures and analyzes this electrical activity, similar to the famous electroencephalogram (EEG) devices, and then extracts the neural commands sent from this activity when the patient focuses on an idea and imagines it happening, thus transforming the patient's intentions into actions.

This is not the first time that a system has been created on this basis, but research in this area began several decades ago, but the new innovation - according to the study - has several basic advantages compared to what is currently available, namely that it is soft on the brain and comfortable to wear, and does not contain No wires.

New EEG system can get improved signals (Flickr)

Additional benefits

These types of devices generally rely on gels and pastes that help keep the device in contact with the skin, require long setup times, are generally uncomfortable to use, and receive brain signals with difficulty due to the additional noise that might result from something like gnashing of teeth.

At that point, the advantages of the new system that avoid these problems appear, as the new EEG system is able to obtain improved signals, because the team - according to the study - has integrated a machine learning algorithm into this system, also supported by virtual reality software, that helps link between What the patient imagines, and the possibility of it happening on the ground.

So far, this new tool is still under development, and was used experimentally with only 4 people who were not patients, but according to the study, the results were completely positive.


The research team hopes that its results will help achieve a substantial addition to this range, which will help many patients in the future.