RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Effects of Peripheral Haptic Feedback on Intracortical Brain-Computer Interface Control and Associated Sensory Responses in Motor Cortex
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.08.17.240648
DO 10.1101/2020.08.17.240648
A1 Darrel R. Deo
A1 Paymon Rezaii
A1 Leigh R. Hochberg
A1 Allison M. Okamura
A1 Krishna V. Shenoy
A1 Jaimie M. Henderson
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/04/08/2020.08.17.240648.abstract
AB Intracortical brain-computer interfaces (iBCIs) provide people with paralysis a means to control devices with signals decoded from brain activity. Despite recent impressive advances, these devices still cannot approach able-bodied levels of control. To achieve naturalistic control and improved performance of neural prostheses, iBCIs will likely need to include proprioceptive feedback. With the goal of providing proprioceptive feedback via mechanical haptic stimulation, we aim to understand how haptic stimulation affects motor cortical neurons and ultimately, iBCI control. We provided skin shear haptic stimulation as a substitute for proprioception to the back of the neck of a person with tetraplegia. The neck location was determined via assessment of touch sensitivity using a monofilament test kit. The participant was able to correctly report skin shear at the back of the neck in 8 unique directions with 65% accuracy. We found motor cortical units that exhibited sensory responses to shear stimuli, some of which were strongly tuned to the stimuli and well modeled by cosine-shaped functions. We also demonstrated online iBCI cursor control with continuous skin-shear feedback driven by decoded command signals. Cursor control performance increased slightly but significantly when the participant was given haptic feedback, compared to the purely visual feedback condition.Competing Interest StatementThe MGH Translational Research Center has a clinical research support agreement with Neuralink, Paradromics, and Synchron, for which LRH provides consultative input. AMO is a consultant for Hyundai CRADLE. JMH is a consultant for Neuralink Corp. and Proteus Biomedical, and serves on the Medical Advisory Board of Enspire DBS. KVS consults for Neuralink Corp. and CTRL-Labs Inc. (part of Facebook Reality Labs) and is on the scientific advisory boards of MIND-X Inc., Inscopix Inc., and Heal Inc. All other authors have no competing interests.