(October 5, 2011) In a first-ever demonstration of a two-way
interaction between a primate brain and a virtual body, two monkeys trained at
the Duke University Center for Neuroengineering learned to employ brain
activity alone to move an avatar hand and identify the texture of virtual
objects.
"Someday in the near future,
quadriplegic patients will take advantage of this technology not only to move
their arms and hands and to walk again, but also to sense the texture of
objects placed in their hands, or experience the nuances of the terrain on
which they stroll with the help of a wearable robotic exoskeleton," said
study leader Miguel Nicolelis, MD, PhD, professor of neurobiology at Duke
University Medical Center and co-director of the Duke Center for
Neuroengineering.
Without moving any part of their
real bodies, the monkeys used their electrical brain activity to direct the
virtual hands of an avatar to the surface of virtual objects and, upon contact,
were able to differentiate their textures.