BMIs for Motor Rehabilitation: Key Concepts and Challenges

Controlling devices using the mind has always fascinated humans. The number of opportunities that have now been opened is unimaginable—for example, the possibility of just thinking while a robot does the task for you or commanding an exoskeleton attached to your body that augments your strength and agility. But not just that: try to imagine the possibility of feeling it as a part of your body or to receive sensory feedback from artificial sensors placed away from your own body. Possibilities like these, very common in science fiction movies in the last decades, are now becoming a reality. Our brain is very powerful, and scientists have devoted much effort to understand and use this power. In recent years, new technologies helped scientists to create brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), bringing the possibility to record and analyze brain signals. By means of thousands of tiny electrodes implanted inside the brain, it is now possible to record this electrical activity, and from these signals, the intentions of the user can be decoded and exploited to command robotic devices. Based on this new technology, a user would be able to control a robotic device while feeling real sensations of what the device is touching, grasping or holding. The most important field where this emerging technology is being applied is motor rehabilitation. Stroke, Parkinson and spinal cord injury patients may have their quality of life really improved by this technology in the very near future.

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