Summary: Nearly two million people in the U.S., and many more worldwide, suffer from severe motor disabilities brought on by neuromuscular impairments, such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brainstem stroke, cerebral palsy, and spinal cord injury (SCI). A Brain Computer Interface (BCI) provides those persons who cannot use or have limited use of their muscles but are cognitively intact with an alternative for communication and control. Noninvasive electroencephalography (EEG) based BCIs have obvious clinical benefits over BCI systems that require surgeries for implantation, but they suffer from poor spatial resolution and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), a critical drawback. The investigators seek to develop a new electrode technology - tripolar concentric ring electrodes (TCREs) - to significantly increase the spatial resolution, SNR, and consequently the communication transfer rate (bit rate) and decrease the training time of EEG based BCIs. Previous attempts to improve EEG based BCIs primarily depended on signal processing techniques without addressing the limitations of the disc electrode, resulting in at best suboptimal outcome. Instead, the investigators will focus on improving the electrode configuration, a new path, to improve EEG and consequently the performance of BCI. The motivation of this work is the superior characteristics of TCREs over disc electrodes, which are strongly supported by preliminary results. To achieve the research objective, experiments are proposed to systematically establish the benefits and practicality of TCREs for BCI through both computer modeling and tests on healthy and SCI persons. Through the university-clinical collaboration, the investigators will have access to a sufficient number of SCI patients and other potential end-users of the technology. The clinical collaboration provides a streamlined mechanism which will facilitate the translation of the research outcomes to practice. The proposed project also serves an education objective of recruiting and training a new generation of scientists from diverse backgrounds who are capable of interfacing between multiple scientific fields.
Intellectual Merit:
1. By using unique TCREs rather than conventional disc electrodes, the investigator is taking an innovative approach to address the critical drawbacks of EEG based BCI. 2. For the first time, the effort will be focused on transforming the electrode design to enhance EEG and consequently the performance of BCI. 3. A critical clinical benefit of the approach taken is that it is noninvasive, substantially reducing the risks and costs associated with BCI systems that require surgical implantation. 4. The knowledge and technology resulting from the research itself will (a) significantly enhance the state of knowledge in the field of BCI and EEG; (b) above and beyond the field of BCI, provide a powerful tool for understanding brain activity and neural disorders in general; and (c) have extensive applicability in the broad space of technologies to aid persons with motor impairments.
Broader Impacts:
1. This work will strengthen the infrastructure for research and education in 3 ways: (1) instituting collaboration across engineering fields and universities, (2) establishing clinical collaboration with VA medical center and a regional hospital, and (3) integrating K-8 education at a Native school. 2. The proposed work is highly interdisciplinary and bridges Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Neuroscience. The ability to recruit students from underrepresented groups is enhanced by this breadth. 3. Graduate and undergraduate students with disabilities and from underrepresented groups will work jointly and gain cutting edge research experience in both academic and clinical settings. 4. An outreach project with a local minority school will provide young minority students (3~8 grade) the opportunity to directly participate in research experiments. 5. Collaboration is established with "Students for a More Accessible Campus" (SFAMAC) to broaden the participation of students with disabilities and raise awareness for research to aid persons with disabilities in the community.
Dr. Besio’s team at the University of Rhode Island has developed a new biopotential sensor. These sensors provide high fidelity signal recordings. The sensors are used to record signals from the brain, heart, muscles, or other organs. Conventional electroencephalographs (EEG), brain signals from the scalp, are contaminated with noise from the person’s movements and their surroundings. By using the team’s newly designed electronics to take the difference between closely spaced elements of the sensor most of the noise is automatically eliminated. The high fidelity signals are similar to what would be recorded if the electrodes were placed on the brain. In severe cases persons with neurological or muscular disorders are unable to move their body parts, and they are "locked in". In this severely debilitating situation interpreting the person’s thoughts may be the only way for them to communicate with the rest of the world. We developed a brain computer interface (BCI), based on our unique tripolar concentric ring electrode sensors, to detect a person’s thoughts and interpret and translate them into computer commands. The team found that these improvements in signal quality produced significantly more efficient brain computer interfaces than with conventionally available EEG sensors. These signal improvements are transformative and will also help in other fields such as when doctors diagnose diseases like epilepsy. Students from diverse populations, both undergraduate and graduate, have had the opportunity to help conduct this research and have gained experiential learning. The students have received hands on opportunities deepening their understanding of physics, engineering, physiology, and mathematics. Four graduate students and twelve undergraduate students, mostly from underrepresented groups, from the Besio NeuroRehabilitation Laboratory at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston Rhode Island have participated in this research. They also collaborated with a local Rhode Island company whose brain signal sensors are considered the gold standard in the industry. Further Dr. Besio performed outreach with Native American students that are in 5th to 12th grade. He has been sharing with them the discoveries being made in his NeuroRehabilitation Laboratory. Dr. Besio’s group has been presenting their findings from this research at international conferences such as the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology and Society for Neuroscience annual conferences and the BCI meetings.
