2. FINALY WE GOT IT ……
The Scientists of University Of Washington were
able to send brain signals via INTERNET to
control the hand movement of two researchers
within a fraction of a second who were seated in
different buildings on the Washington campus.
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3. HOW… ???
One participant, the ‘sender’ is hooked to an
Electroencephalography machine that reads his brain activity
and sends electrical pulses via internet to the ‘receiver’.
The receiver has a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Coil
placed near the part of his brain that controls the hand
movements.
With this technology, the sender can issue a command to move
the hand of the receiver by simply thinking about the hand
movement.
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4. WHAT IS TMS…???
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a method in which
a changing magnetic field is used to cause electric current to
flow in a small region of the brain via electromagnetic
induction. During a TMS procedure, a magnetic field
generator, or "coil", is placed near the head of the person
receiving the treatment. The coil is connected to a pulse
generator, or stimulator, that delivers a changing electric
current to the coil.
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5. WHAT THEY DID ACTUALLY …???
The sender, who is playing a computer game in which he has
to defend a city by firing cannons, thinks about firing the
cannon at various interval throughout the game.
The “fire” brain signal is sent over the internet directly to
the brain of the receiver, whose hand hits a touchpad that
allows him to fire the cannon.
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7. WHAT THEY DID ACTUALLY …???
The device connects directly to the users’ scalps and impulses from the
sender were picked up via electroencephalogram (EEG) as well as by
image-guided and robot-assisted transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS).
The signal was encoded and sent via the internet to the user on the
other end. Once it reached its target destination, the code was then
interpreted by a computer interface and delivered to the recipient.
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8. BEHIND THAT…
The device worn by the recipient stimulates phosphenes, which
appear as flashes of light even though there isn’t actually any light
entering the eye. (You can see this phenomenon for yourself by going
into a dark room, closing your eyes, and then pushing on your
eyeball.)
The phosphenes are delivered in a pattern, which needs to be
deciphered by the recipient who wears a blindfold to block out other
visual stimuli.
A phosphene is a phenomenon characterized by the experiencing of
light without light actually entering the eye.
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9. ITS APPLICATIONS..
Brain injuries or disorders
Offers a wide opportunity for developing protocols for
interacting with or putting information into a human
brain
Paralyzed patients walk by using their brain signals
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10. PIONEERS BEHIND IT…
Prof. Rajesh P.N. Rao is the
Director of the NSF Center for
Sensorimotor Neural
Engineering and the Cherng
Jia and Elizabeth Yun Hwang
Professor of Computer Science
and Engineering at the
University of Washington in
Seattle
Dr. Chantel Prat is an
Associate Professor in the
Department of Psychology at
UW
Dr. Andrea Stocco is
an Assistant Professor at the
Department of Psychology
and the Institute for
Learning and Brain Sciences
(I-LABS), and co-director of
the Cognition and Cortical
Dynamics Laboratory at UW
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