SAN DIEGO, CA — Neurotechnology — the combination of neuroscience and technology — has the potential to both "decode" and shape brain activity, with important implications for future interventions in humans. The findings were presented at Neuroscience 2022, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience and the world’s largest source of emerging news about brain science and health.
Neurotechnology encompasses an increasing array of devices, algorithms, and methodologies that can monitor or modulate neural activity, including nerve stimulators, brain implants, and bioprostheses. By offering access to specific groups of neurons, such approaches serve as powerful tools to study the brain and have the potential to enable targeted therapies for neurological disorders. New research highlights potential uses of neurotechnology for enabling speech in individuals with paralysis and for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is estimated to affect 12 million U.S. adults each year.
Today’s new findings show that:
"For people with impairments in communication, mobility, or mental health, neurotechnology holds the promise of creating new paths between disconnected parts of the nervous system," said Leigh Hochberg, director of the Center for Neurotechnology and Neurorecovery at Massachusetts General Hospital and the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of Engineering at Brown University, and moderator of the press conference. "As a practicing neurocritical care physician, I want to be able to tell my patients with spinal cord injury, stroke, ALS, or traumatic brain injury that we can restore their communication or mobility quickly and completely.”
This research was supported by national funding agencies including the National Institutes of Health and private funding organizations. Find out more about neurotechnology on BrainFacts.org.
Press Conference Summary
- Neurotechnological approaches have the potential to interpret or alter activity in targeted brain regions.
- Electrical brain stimulation has been used to pinpoint and eliminate conditioned fear responses in rodents.
- Brain-computer interfaces can help "decode" speech-related thoughts in people unable to talk due to paralysis.
Involvement of the Locus Coeruleus in the Enhancement of Fear Extinction Driven by Vagus Nerve Stimulation
Christa McIntyre, christa.mcintyre@utdallas.edu, Abstract 143.02
A Speech Neuroprosthesis for Generalizable Spelling in a Person with Severe Paralysis and Anarthria
Sean L. Metzger, sean.metzger@ucsf.edu, Abstract 389.12
Decoding Speech and Internal Speech From Populations of Single Units From the Supramarginal Gyrus in a Tetraplegic Human
Sarah Kim Wandelt, sarah.wandelt@gmail.com, Abstract 390.07