THE brain is the body’s computer. Human life depends upon it. But for all its importance, the brain is one of the least understood organs. In the past two decades scientists learned more about the brain than ever before. The accelerating pace of research in neurological and behavioral science and the development of new research techniques have meant that the mysteries of the brain are beginning to be revealed.
The latest research offers incredible possibilities. Take for instance an initiative from California’s Stanford Hospital & Clinics (www.stanfordmedicine.org) in which doctors and a special patient are using new imaging tools to document how a seizure travels through the brain. For the 50 million people worldwide who suffer from epilepsy, the doctors’ understanding of what is going on in artist Jeff Nelson’s brain might be a map to freedom.
Twice now, Nelson has come to Stanford Hospital & Clinics Comprehensive Epilepsy Center to undergo long hours of testing. First, he sits patiently while neuroscientists attach dozens of electrical cables to a special cap he wears during testing. Then, into the narrow tunnel of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner, he goes. The wires gauge his brain’s electrical pulses, sending the data as an electroencephalogram — an EEG. The MRI records changes in blood flow in his brain.
Stanford is one of just a few places in the world with the technology to correlate the information from the EEG and the MRI. The combination of the two forms of seizure observation allows Stanford physicians to see something previously very elusive: the real time interaction between the brain’s architecture and the electrical abnormalities that spark epileptic seizures.
Nelson is involved because he has a special kind of epilepsy, called reflex epilepsy. Instead of being random, unpredictable occurrences, reflex epilepsy’s seizures happen after exposure to a certain sight, smell or sound. Those known triggers enable Nelson's physicians at Stanford to produce and then observe a seizure, capturing valuable data. The analysis of what goes on in Nelson's brain during a seizure is building a behavioral diagram that will one day guide a less invasive, less risky and more permanent treatment for epilepsy.
“We know that seizures do not affect single centers in the brain,” said Josef Parvizi, MD, Ph.D, a neurology specialist with the Stanford Comprehensive Epilepsy Clinic who leads the team of investigators studying Nelson’s brain. “Instead, the excess electrical activity that produces a seizure travels on a network whose pathways range over several areas of the brain. Being able to interrupt, very specifically, the seizure network’s connections and pathways, is the treatment goal and an alternative to brain surgery.”
“Saying seizures start in one place is a simplification because our trillions of brain cells are interconnected,” said Epilepsy Center Director Robert Fisher, MD. “The type of work Dr. Parvizi is doing by combining state-of-the-art electrical and imaging methods will take our understanding of seizure origin and behavioral consequences into the next dimension. Within a few years, this work may allow us to disrupt the spread and mitigate the effects of seizures.”
Nelson is participating in the testing as a way to speed up the research into finding a treatment or cure for epilepsy. Nelson’s seizures began in childhood and, now, even with medication, he may have up to 20 seizures in one day. With an undergraduate degree in art history from University of California-Santa Cruz, Nelson was on course to begin a master’s degree in ancient Chinese history. Instead, he is now chronicling, with an artist’s eye, the hallucinations he sees while in the grip of a seizure.
Sometimes the seizures turn Nelson’s world into one of bright lights and swirling colors. In other seizures, things go black and he sees a ball with colors emanating off it. “This ball feels like it's moving through my brain,” Nelson said. “It’s a grinding feeling. I almost have this sense that it’s grinding my brain.”
He is eager to see what his tests reveal about his epilepsy, and to learn if enough new information might be visible to outline new treatment options. At least now, Nelson has hope that technology might reveal the path to a normal life.
While abnormal electrical activity in his brain creates Nelson’s seizures, during the human thought process, it is normal for the brain to experience slight electrical current and blood flow changes. New technology has been developed that can measure, interpret and relay the changes created by thought. This has now resulted in the world’s first Brain Machine Interface (BMI) that is able to control a robot by human thought alone.
Honda Research Institute Japan Co., Ltd. (HRI-JP), Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) and Shimadzu Corporation have collaboratively developed the world’s first Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology that uses electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), along with newly developed information extraction technology to control Honda’s ASIMO humanoid robot. Using these technologies, human thought moves the robot without a requirement for any physical interaction, such as pressing buttons.
The newly developed Brain Machine Interface (BMI) technology combines EEG, which measures changes in electrical potential on the scalp, and NIRS, which measures changes in cerebral blood flow, with a newly developed information extraction technology which enables statistical processing of the complex information from these two types of sensors. As a result, it became possible to distinguish brain activities.
To make the technology function, first EEG and NIRS sensors are placed on the head of the user. Then, one of four pre-determined body part options is provided to the user. The user imagines moving that body part without making any physical movement. Changes in both brain waves and cerebral blood flow triggered by the brain activity are measured simultaneously. The data obtained are analyzed on a real-time basis to distinguish what the user imagined. Upon receiving the result, Honda’s ASIMO humanoid robot makes corresponding movements such as raising its arm or leg. An accuracy rate of more than 90 percent has been achieved during the test phases of the project.
The companies plan to continue developing the technology for its application in human-friendly products in the future. The goal is to integrate it with artificial intelligence technologies and/or robotic technologies. The potential is vast. Individuals who are disabled could use intelligent devices to do physical tasks through thought control alone. In factories, robots with superhuman strength could be commanded by thought, rather than levers or joysticks. Other uses are already being actively considered for safety and security situations.
Non-invasive BMI uses sensors touching the user’s scalp — nothing is implanted in the brain. As the size of the hardware is reduced and the thought control centers in the mind that manage various tasks are better understood, it is certain that the technology will leave the laboratory and find numerous real world applications.