When the mind controls the machines

Stroke survivors, as well as patients suffering from other serious conditions, may have to deal with the partial or complete inability to move one or more of their limbs. In the most severe cases, the sufferer may become fully paralyzed and in need of permanent assistance.

The TOBI project (Tools for brain-computer interaction) is financed by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research (FP7) and is coordinated by EPFL. Since 2008 it has focused on the use of the signals transmitted by the brain. The electrical activity that takes place in the brain when the patient focuses on a particular task such as lifting an arm is detected by electroencephalography (EEG) through electrodes placed in a cap worn by the patient. Subsequently, a computer reads the signals and turns them into concrete actions as, for instance, moving a cursor on a screen.

Tests involving more than 100 patients
Based on this idea, researchers from thirteen institutions together with TOBI project partners have developed various technologies aimed at either obtaining better signal quality, making them clearer, or translating them into useful and functional applications. During the research, more than 100 patients or handicapped users had the opportunity to test the devices. Three of the technologies developed within the framework of TOBI were publicly presented at the closing seminar of the research program that took place in Sion from 23 to 25 January 2013.

1. Robotino, for helping rebuild social ties when bedridden. Combining EEG, signal recognition, obstacle sensors and the internet, researchers have been able to develop a small robot equipped with a camera and a screen that can be controlled remotely by physically disabled people. Thanks to this device, the patient can take a virtual walk in a familiar environment, meet her/his relatives and talk to them, even if they are thousands of miles away from each other.
2. Braintree, for writing texts and internet surfing. Researchers have also developed a graphical interface specially adapted for web browsing by severely disabled people. By thinking, the patient is able to move a cursor in a tree structure in order to type a character or choose a command. Depending on the specific situation, the sensors can also detect residual muscular activity to complement the management of the device.
3. Functional electrical stimulation, to restore some basic mobility. Coupling EEG with electrical muscle stimulation can allow a patient to voluntarily control the movement of a paralyzed limb. In some cases, intensive training using this system has allowed the patients to regain control of the limb and keep it without assistance. A report on this technique can be seen in this video.

The results of the TOBI research program have restored patients’ hope. They will constitute the basis of subsequent developments to be conducted among the research partners or at industrial level. As for EPFL, such results will be the core of its health research chairs at the new EPFL Valais Wallis academic cluster, which can also count on the participation and support of the SuvaCare rehabilitation clinic in Sion.

UCI neuroscientists create fiber-optic method of arresting epileptic seizures

UC Irvine neuroscientists have developed a way to stop epileptic seizures with fiber-optic light signals, heralding a novel opportunity to treat the most severe manifestations of the brain disorder.

Using a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy, Ivan Soltesz, Chancellor’s Professor and chair of anatomy & neurobiology, and colleagues created an EEG-based computer system that activates hair-thin optical strands implanted in the brain when it detects a real-time seizure.

These fibers subsequently “turn on” specially expressed, light-sensitive proteins called opsins, which can either stimulate or inhibit specific neurons in select brain regions during seizures, depending on the type of opsin.

The researchers found that this process was able to arrest ongoing electrical seizure activity and reduce the incidence of severe “tonic-clonic” events.

“This approach is useful for understanding how seizures occur and how they can be stopped experimentally,” Soltesz said. “In addition, clinical efforts that affect a minimum number of cells and only at the time of a seizure may someday overcome many of the side effects and limitations of currently available treatment options.”

Study results appear online in Nature Communications.

More than 3 million Americans suffer from epilepsy, a condition of recurrent spontaneous seizures that occur unpredictably, often cause changes in consciousness, and can preclude normal activities such as driving and working. In at least 40 percent of patients, seizures cannot be controlled with existing drugs, and even in those whose seizures are well controlled, the treatments can have major cognitive side effects.

Although the study was carried out in mice, not humans, Soltesz said the work could lead to a better alternative to the currently available electrical stimulation devices.

Temple scientists find cancer-causing virus in the brain, potential connection to epilepsy

Researchers at Shriner’s Hospital Pediatric Research Center at the Temple University School of Medicine, and the University of Pennsylvania have evidence linking the human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) – the most common cause of cervical cancer – to a common form of childhood epilepsy. They have shown for the first time that HPV16 may be present in the human brain, and found that when they added a viral protein to the brains of fetal mice, the mice all demonstrated the same developmental problems in the cerebral cortex associated with this type of epilepsy, called focal cortical dysplasia type IIB (FCDIIB). The findings suggest that the virus could play a role in the development of epilepsy.

The results also mean that doctors may have to re-think their approach to treating this type of epilepsy, and perhaps consider other therapeutic options related to HPV, an infectious disease.

"This is a novel mechanism, and it fills a gap in our understanding about the development of congenital brain malformations," said Peter Crino, MD, PhD, Professor of Neurology at Temple University School of Medicine, and a member of Shriner’s Hospital Pediatric Research Center, and the senior author of a recent report in the Annals of Neurology.

"If our data are correct, future treatment of cortical dysplasia could include targeted therapy against HPV16 infection, with the goal of halting seizures. Identifying an infectious agent as part of the pathogenesis of brain malformations could open up an array of new therapeutic approaches against various forms of epilepsy."

(Image: ASME.org)

Science Needs a Second Opinion: Researchers Find Flaws in Study of Patients in “Vegetative State”

A team of researchers led by Weill Cornell Medical College is calling into question the published statistics, methods and findings of a highly publicized research study that claimed bedside electroencephalography (EEG) identified evidence of awareness in three patients diagnosed to be in a vegetative state.

The new reanalysis study led by Weill Cornell neurologists Drs. Andrew Goldfine, Jonathan Victor, and Nicholas Schiff, published in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Lancet, reports the statistical results and methodology used by a research team led by University of Western Ontario scientists and published online Nov. 9, 2011, also in the Lancet, was flawed in a number of crucial ways. Due to these errors, the reanalysis concludes it is impossible to determine whether or not these vegetative state study subjects demonstrated any degree of awareness during the testing.

Read more

(Image: RightBrainPhotography)

Children’s complex thinking skills begin forming before they go to school

New research at the University of Chicago and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shows that children begin to show signs of higher-level thinking skills as young as age 4 ½. Researchers have previously attributed higher-order thinking development to knowledge acquisition and better schooling, but the new longitudinal study shows that other skills, not always connected with knowledge, play a role in the ability of children to reason analytically. 

The findings, reported in January in the journal Psychological Science, show for the first time that children’s executive function has a role in the development of complicated analytical thinking. Executive function includes such complex skills as planning, monitoring, task switching, and controlling attention. High early executive function skills at school entry are related to higher than average reasoning skills in adolescence. 

Growing research suggests that executive function may be trainable through pathways, including preschool curriculum, exercise and impulse control training. Parents and teachers may be able to help encourage development of executive function by having youngsters help plan activities, learn to stop, think, and then take action, or engage in pretend play, said lead author of the study, Lindsey Richland, assistant professor of comparative human development at the University of Chicago.

Although important to a child’s education, “little is known about the cognitive mechanisms underlying children’s development of the capacity to engage in complex forms of reasoning,” Richland said.

The new research is reported in the paper “Early Executive Function Predicts Reasoning Development” and follows the development of complex reasoning in children from before the time they go to school until they are 15. Richland’s co-author is Margaret Burchinal, senior scientist at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

(Image: Shutterstock)

Learning and Memory May Play a Central Role in Synesthesia

People with color-grapheme synesthesia experience color when viewing written letters or numerals, usually with a particular color evoked by each grapheme (i.e., the letter ‘A’ evokes the color red). In a new study, researchers Nathan Witthoft and Jonathan Winawer of Stanford University present data from 11 color grapheme synesthetes who had startlingly similar color-letter pairings that were traceable to childhood toys containing magnetic colored letters.

Their findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Matching data from the 11 participants showed reliably consistent letter-color matches, both within and between testing sessions (data collected online at http://www.synesthete.org/). Participants’ matches were consistent even after a delay of up to seven years since their first session.

Participants also performed a timed task, in which they were presented with colored letters for 1 second each and required to indicate whether the color was consistent with their synesthetic association. Their data show that they were able to perform the task rapidly and accurately.

Together, these data suggest that the participants’ color-letter associations are specific, automatic, and relatively constant over time, thereby meeting the criteria for true synesthesia.

The degree of similarity in the letter-color pairings across participants, along with the regular repeating pattern in the colors found in each individual’s letter-color pairings, indicates that the pairings were learned from the magnetic colored letters that the participants had been exposed to in childhood.

According to the researchers, these are the first and only data to show learned synesthesia of this kind in more than a single individual.

They point out that this does not mean that exposure to the colored letter magnets was sufficient to induce synesthesia in the participants, though it may have increased the chances. After all, many people who do not have synesthesia played with the same colored letter magnets as kids.

Based on their findings, Witthoft and Winawer conclude that a complete explanation of synesthesia must incorporate a central role for learning and memory.

(Image: Shutterstock)

Can You Smell Yourself?

You might not be able to pick your fingerprint out of an inky lineup, but your brain knows what you smell like. For the first time, scientists have shown that people recognize their own scent based on their particular combination of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) proteins, molecules similar to those used by animals to choose their mates. The discovery suggests that humans can also exploit the molecules to differentiate between people.

"This is definitely new and exciting," says Frank Zufall, a neurobiologist at Saarland University’s School of Medicine in Homburg, Germany, who was not involved in the work. "This type of experiment had never been done on humans before."

MHC peptides are found on the surface of almost all cells in the human body, helping inform the immune system that the cells are ours. Because a given combination of MHC peptides—called an MHC type—is unique to a person, they can help the body recognize invading pathogens and foreign cells. Over the past 2 decades, scientists have discovered that the molecules also foster communication between animals, including mice and fish. Stickleback fish, for example, choose mates with different MHC types than their own. Then, in 1995, researchers conducted the now famous “sweaty T-shirt study,” which concluded that women prefer the smell of men who have different MHC genes than themselves. But no studies had shown a clear-cut physiological response to MHC proteins.

In the new work, Thomas Boehm, a biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany, and colleagues first tested whether women can recognize lab-made MHC proteins resembling their own. After showering, 22 women applied two different solutions to their armpits and decided which odor they liked better. The experiment was repeated two to six times for each participant. Women preferred to wear a synthetic scent containing their own MHC proteins, but only if they were nonsmokers and didn’t have a cold. The study did not determine which scents women preferred on other people, but past studies on perfume have shown that individuals prefer different smells on themselves than on others.

The researchers wanted to know whether the preferences were truly rooted in the brain’s response to the proteins. So next, they used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure changes in the brains of 19 different women when they smelled the various solutions, in aerosol form puffed toward their noses. “Sure enough, there again was a clear difference between the response to self and non-self peptides,” Boehm says. “There was a particular region of the brain that was only activated by peptides resembling a person’s own MHC molecules.” The brain had a similar response to all non-self MHC combinations, suggesting that any preference for how other people smell is a preference for non-self, not for particular MHC types.

(Image: Getty)

Oxygen Chamber Can Boost Brain Repair

Stroke, traumatic injury, and metabolic disorder are major causes of brain damage and permanent disabilities, including motor dysfunction, psychological disorders, memory loss, and more. Current therapy and rehab programs aim to help patients heal, but they often have limited success.

Now Dr. Shai Efrati of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine has found a way to restore a significant amount of neurological function in brain tissue thought to be chronically damaged — even years after initial injury. Theorizing that high levels of oxygen could reinvigorate dormant neurons, Dr. Efrati and his fellow researchers, including Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob of TAU’s School of Physics and Astronomy and the Sagol School of Neuroscience, recruited post-stroke patients for hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) — sessions in high pressure chambers that contain oxygen-rich air — which increases oxygen levels in the body tenfold.

Analysis of brain imaging showed significantly increased neuronal activity after a two-month period of HBOT treatment compared to control periods of non-treatment, reported Dr. Efrati in PLoS ONE. Patients experienced improvements such as a reversal of paralysis, increased sensation, and renewed use of language. These changes can make a world of difference in daily life, helping patients recover their independence and complete tasks such as bathing, cooking, climbing stairs, or reading a book.

Pavlov’s Rats? Rodents Trained to Link Rewards to Visual Cues

In experiments on rats outfitted with tiny goggles, scientists say they have learned that the brain’s initial vision processing center not only relays visual stimuli, but also can “learn” time intervals and create specifically timed expectations of future rewards. The research, by a team at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sheds new light on learning and memory-making, the investigators say, and could help explain why people with Alzheimer’s disease have trouble remembering recent events.

Results of the study, in the journal Neuron, suggest that connections within nerve cell networks in the vision-processing center can be strengthened by the neurochemical acetylcholine (ACh), which the brain is thought to secrete after a reward is received. Only nerve cell networks recently stimulated by a flash of light delivered through the goggles are affected by ACh, which in turn allows those nerve networks to associate the visual cue with the reward. Because brain structures are highly conserved in mammals, the findings likely have parallels in humans, they say.

“We’ve discovered that nerve cells in this part of the brain, the primary visual cortex, seem to be able to develop molecular memories, helping us understand how animals learn to predict rewarding outcomes,” says Marshall Hussain Shuler, Ph.D., assistant professor of neuroscience at the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

To maximize survival, an animal’s brain has to remember what cues precede a positive or negative event, allowing the animal to alter its behavior to increase rewards and decrease mishaps. In the Hopkins-MIT study, the researchers sought clarity about how the brain links visual information to more complex information about time and reward.

The presiding theory, Hussain Shuler says, assumed that this connection was made in areas devoted to “high-level” processing, like the frontal cortex, which is known to be important for learning and memory. The primary visual cortex seemed to simply receive information from the eyes and “re-piece” the visual world together before presenting it to decision-making parts of the brain.