Non-invasive BCI-controlled Assistive Devices

Plain-language summary

Injuries affecting the central nervous system may disrupt the cortical pathways to muscles causing loss of motor control. Nevertheless, the brain still exhibits sensorimotor rhythms (SMRs) during movement intents or motor imagery (MI), which is the mental rehearsal of the kinesthetics of a movement without actually performing it. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can decode SMRs to control assistive devices and promote functional recovery. Despite rapid advancements in non-invasive BCI systems based on EEG, two persistent challenges remain: First, the instability of SMR patterns due to the non-stationarity of neural signals, which may significantly degrade BCI performance over days and hamper the effectiveness of BCI-based rehabilitation. Second, differentiating MI patterns corresponding to fine hand movements of the same limb is still difficult due to the low spatial resolution of EEG. To address the first challenge, subjects usually learn to elicit reliable SMR and improve BCI control through longitudinal training, so a fundamental question is how to accelerate subject training building upon the SMR neurophysiology. In this study, the investigators hypothesize that conditioning the brain with transcutaneous electrical spinal stimulation, which reportedly induces cortical inhibition, would constrain the neural dynamics and promote focal and strong SMR modulations in subsequent MI-based BCI training sessions - leading to accelerated BCI training. To address the second challenge, the investigators hypothesize that neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) applied contingent to the voluntary activation of the primary motor cortex through MI can help differentiate patterns of activity associated with different hand movements of the same limb by consistently recruiting the separate neural pathways associated with each of the movements within a closed-loop BCI setup. The investigators study the neuroplastic changes associated with training with the two stimulation modalities.

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