Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Sensori-
Motor
Damage
Prosthetic
Replacement
Approach
Tissue
Regeneration
Approach
Bioelectric
transducers
Computing
with
Neural
Modulation
Adaptive
Signal
Processing in
Silicon
Scaffolding
Neurotrophic
Factors
Cell
Replacement
(Stem Cells)
FIgURE 1.1:
Roadmap of treatments for neural prosthetics, regeneration, and repair.
In contrast, the engineering approach is based on the artificial neural interface concept to
provide therapy options for these individuals. While preserving the same function of the damaged
biological systems, the man-made neural interface effectively creates a conduit to transduce the sig-
naling of the nervous systems into quantities that can be used by computing architectures that aug-
ment or replace existing neural substrates [
5
].
2
Neural interface technologies are heavily influenced
by electrical and computer engineering principles because they provide the basis and tools for the
analysis of time varying quantities such as those produced by the nervous system. On the left branch
of Figure
1.1
, new processes must be created to mimic the integration, transduction, and interpreta-
tion of real biological events that occur internally or through interaction of the organism with the
environment. These techniques include the use of adaptive signal processing to compute with neural
modulation and the subsequent implementation of that processing in hardware. The overall role of
the neural prosthetic are to create one or many of the following: (1) an artificial sensory system (so-
matosensory, occipital, auditory) by delivering the external world stimuli to the appropriate cortices;
(2) an artificial command and control link that allows the motor commands to directly interact with
the environment (through robotic or computerized devices); (3) a neural augmentation link within
2
For a comprehensive review of sensory and motor prosthetics, see Reference [
5
].
