KPLU Local News
(2007-01-11)
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I'd heard about researchers who connect computers to someone's scalp, with wires. And I went to visit Rajesh Rao. I didn't know I'd be getting hooked-up to the machine. Raj wants to create a robot helper for someone who's lost all movement - can't even blink their eyes.
Rajesh Rao: If you're paralyzed and restricted to being in a chair for example, or in the bed, could you actually get the robot to bring you a cup of water or a medicine bottle from a different location, such as your kitchen in your house?
The robot would take commands directly from the brain.
Rajesh Rao: So you get to remotely control the robot. But in this case what we are saying is instead of controlling the robot with a keyboard or joystick, why don't you just directly let your brain do it.
Then the robot becomes like an extension of your body. Except - how do you get your thoughts out of your brain and into a wire? Scientists around the world are tackling the challenge. Raj is a computer science professor at the University of Washington, who also studies neuroscience. He has a research team and a robotics lab. Really, it's just a big office.
Keith Seinfeld: So we are going to put the electrode hat on me, ... here it goes. It feels like a tight ski cap.
It's a blue and red cap with 32 holes in it, for electrical sensors. The goal is to listen to electrical activity inside my brain - and connect it to a computer. It's called E-E-G, and it's commonly used to study epilepsy and sleep disorders.
Rajesh Rao: We are relying on the fact that the brain's activities and the cell's activities in the brain are electric. ... And when you have a large number of these cells together... that's something you can detect at the scalp.
Keith Seinfeld: Alright, we're going to train the computer to recognize my brain signals, electrical brain waves.
The recent breakthrough for Raj Rao and other researchers is in teaching a computer to recognize certain brain patterns. They've found that whenever we see something we're looking for, the brain responds by going Aha! like a reflex.
Rajesh Rao: So if you are driving around, and you are looking for a Starbucks ... and then all of the sudden you do see the Starbucks come up in front of you, and at that particular moment, your brain is going to register the aha' response.
They sit me in front of a computer screen, watching a slide-show. You choose one image to watch for, and when it flashes on the screen, your brain goes, Aha.
Keith Seinfeld to Rajesh Rao: The one I'm looking at is just flashing up for a split second, barely enough for me to even notice. But that's enough for, for my brain to do something and it to recognize it?
Rajesh Rao: Sure, yeah ... as long as you are paying attention to one particular object.
Once the computer identifies my brain's personal electrical pattern as it goes, Aha, then I can give it orders - without saying or typing a word. But, the laptop isn't cooperating. So, they put research assistant C.J. Bell in the drivers seat. The computer's already trained to recognize C.J.'s brainwaves. C.J. will control the robot.
(Sound of robot walking: Sounds similar to a dishwasher.)
That's the sound of a cute little silver robot, built in Japan. It's nicknamed Morpheus. It's knee-high and walks like a tentative toddler. The wires now run from C.J.'s scalp to a laptop, and then into Morpheus.
Rajesh Rao: Okay, so now the robot is walking toward the objects.
Morpheus has two little video cameras for eyes. And C.J. - facing a computer - can see pictures of what the robot sees, as it teeters toward a small table.
Rajesh Rao: You'll see that the robot is tracking two objects that it sees in its cameras. ... One is a red-colored block; another is a green-colored block.
C.J. is concentrating on one of the blocks.
Rajesh Rao: Now you can see it has actually picked up the red object, and now it's backing up.
Keith Seinfeld to C.J. Bell: C.J., did it pick the right one? Was red what you wanted?
C.J. Bell: Yeah.
The robot's obeying. Raj says this system is the first time a brain has been wired to a free-moving humanoid robot. But then, Morpheus fumbles the red block onto the floor. It's got a long ways to go before it'll be much of a helper. Raj says people get unrealistic expectations from Hollywood.
Rajesh Rao: They expect robots to do things that actual robots cannot really do. For example, robots driving trucks on busy streets, shooting at people as in the Terminator movies.
Movie scene:
Boy: ... you're really real! ... You're, uh, like a machine underneath, right, but sort of alive outside?
TERMINATOR: I'm a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over metal endoskeleton.
In the Terminator series, Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a futuristic half-robot, half-human. It's more powerful than ordinary humans - and a far-cry from wobbly little Morpheus.
There are scientists who are working on something a little more like Terminator. But, it requires going through the skull and directly to the brain. You can find those experiments on the other side of campus.
Chet Moritz: My name is Chet Moritz, I'm a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Washington School of Medicine. What we are doing is recording from the motor cortex in a monkey, while he essentially plays video games.
We're in a neuroscience lab. The monkey's playing a pretty simple game. He moves a white rectangle on the screen, to cover up another rectangle that moves around the screen. Whenever he hits the target, he gets applesauce. The monkey's in a booth, like a phone booth, so he won't be distracted. Chet brings him out to meet me.
Chet Moritz: Yeah, his name is Lenny. That's one of fun parts of job actually, is getting to spend time with these guys. They definitely like to come out and do the task, and they'll do back-flips and jump up and down ... and run out and seat themselves in this little chair that he's sitting in.
Back in the booth, Lenny plays the video game at first with a joystick. Then they turn the joystick off.
Keith Seinfeld to Chet Moritz: So he's actually just thinking about it?
Chet Moritz: He still has the joystick, and he can do whatever he wants with his hand ... but the cursor is now controlled by the activity of his brain, by a single neuron in his brain.
The monkey has a little black cap on his head, and it has a wire that goes to the area of his brain that sends orders to his right arm. There are thousands of active neurons every time he twitches his right arm. The researchers have zeroed in on a single brain-cell. The scientist who discovered how to do this is Eb Fetz, just down the hall.
(Sound: A clicking noise)
Keith Seinfeld to Eb Fetz: What's that sound?
Eb Fetz: That sound is a click whenever the cell fires once.
Keith Seinfeld: So that is a single brain cell out of whatever we have, millions and billions of brain cells, it's a single brain cell going on and off, on and off?
Eb Fetz: That's correct. That's right. The sound of the firing of the cell is what we are listening to.
9Sound: A clicking noise)
Fetz came up with this approach 30 years ago. Only recently, with computers, have they found a practical use. For example, you can connect cells in one region of the brain through a wire to a cell in another region. By timing it just right, they can train both cells to fire together. For someone who's had a stroke or other brain damage, this could be a way to teach the brain how to build a bridge around a damaged area. Chet Moritz's work with the monkey and joystick aims to help people who have a paralyzed arm or leg. They're finding ways to send a signal from the brain, through a computer chip, and back to the arm, and make the muscles twitch. Moritz is matter-of-fact about an incredible goal:
Chet Moritz: The long-term goal of these experiments is to use brain signals to control the stimulation of stepping movements, and restore walking in individuals with spinal cord injury.
In other labs around the world, scientists are using electrodes that tap into dozens of cells at once. That's how they got a paralyzed man to move a cursor on a computer screen, and one company hopes to market electrodes that control a mechanical hand. The systems are still bulky and crude, and don't last long. But don't be surprised if a decade from now you see people using them. Keith Seinfeld, KPLU news. © Copyright 2010, KPLU
