Demonstration of a portable intracortical brain-computer interface

ABSTRACT

While recent advances in intracortical brain-computer interfaces (iBCI) have demonstrated the ability to restore motor and communication functions, such demonstrations have generally been confined to controlled experimental settings and have required bulky laboratory hardware. Here, we developed and evaluated a self-contained portable iBCI that enabled the user to interact with various computer programs. The iBCI, which weighs 1.5 kg, consists of digital headstages, a small signal processing hub, and a tablet PC. A human participant tested the portable iBCI in laboratory and home settings under an FDA Investigational Device Exemption (NCT01894802). The participant successfully completed 96% of trials in a 2D cursor center-out task with the portable iBCI, a rate indistinguishable from that achieved with the standard laboratory iBCI. The participant also completed a variety of free-form tasks, including drawing, gaming, and typing.

KEYWORDS:

• Portable
• intracortical brain-computer interface
• spinal cord injury
• computer access

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our participant Nathan Copeland for making this work possible. The authors also thank to RNEL neurosurgeon Elizabeth Tyler-Kabara and lab members Kristin Quick, Angelica Herrera, and Chris Hughes for their contributions to electrode array implantation and data collection, as well as Gina McKernan for discussions about statistical analyses. We would like to thank Blackrock Microsystems employees Charles Dryden and Hyrum Sessions for contributions to hardware and firmware development.

Disclosure statement

Robert Franklin is an employee of Blackrock Microsystems LLC, a company that may be affected by the research reported in the enclosed paper.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific (SSC Pacific) under Contract N66001-16-C-4051. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of DARPA or SSC Pacific.