Lecture 20 - overcoming damage to the motor system

Question 1

What is deep brain stimulation?

Answer 1

placing an electrical stimulator in the brain

Question 2

What is encoding?

Answer 2

cosine tuning of movement direction
different neurons prefer different directions

Question 3

What is decoding?

Answer 3

population vectors
by listening to hundreds of neurons at a time you can get a good idea of what direction the subject is moving in

Question 4

Describe brain-spine interfaces.

Answer 4

• build an artificial electronic bridge between the spinal cord and brain
• allows for the spinal cord to still send signals to the brain without any external hardware

Question 5

What are the 2 different applications for closing the loop of BMIs?

Answer 5

1. neuroprosthetics - replace lost connections.
2. neuroplasticity - strengthen surviving connections

Question 6

What are some other approaches to BMIs?

Answer 6

1. electrical signals from the brain can be obtained from a variety of invasive and non-invasive electrodes
2. EEG
3. MEG
4. fMRI
5. PET
6. SPECT

Question 7

What is the biommetic approach?

Answer 7

interfaces should be designed to mimic lost motor pathways to restore natural limb movement
a decoder is built using brain signals during real or imagined movements