Scientists create robotic arm that can be moved using your imagination all the details revealed

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, have enabled a paralysed man to regularly control a robotic arm using signals from his brain, transmitted via a computer.He was able to grasp, move, and release objects simply by imagining himself performing the actions.The device, known as a brain-computer interface (BCI), functioned successfully for a record seven months without requiring any adjustments.Until now, such devices had only worked for a day or two.

This BCI relies on an artificial intelligence (AI) model that adapts to small changes in brain activity as a person repeatedly imagines a movement, gradually improving its accuracy.“This blending of learning between humans and AI is the next phase for these brain-computer interfaces,” said Professor Karunesh Ganguly, a neurologist at UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences.“It’s what we need to achieve sophisticated, lifelike function.”The study, funded by the US National Institutes of Health, was published on 6 March in the journal Cell.One of the study participants, who lost the ability to move and speak following a stroke years ago, can now control the robotic arm by imagining specific movements.The key breakthrough involved understanding how brain activity shifts from day to day when the participant repeatedly imagines making these movements.

Once the AI system was trained to account for these changes, it maintained performance for months at a time.Professor Ganguly previously studied brain activity patterns in animals and observed that these patterns evolved as the animals learned new movements.He suspected the same process was occurring in humans, which explained why earlier BCIs quickly lost their ability to interpret brain signals.Ganguly and Dr.

Nikhilesh Natraj, a neurology researcher, worked with a participant who had been paralysed by a stroke and could neither move nor speak.The participant had tiny sensors implanted on the surface of his brain to detect neural ac...