 |
 |
$6,700,000 for bionic war on disabilities30 Dec
2004
University of
Utah gets grants for devices to help paralyzed people -
University of Utah researchers have won about $6.7
million in federal grants to develop wireless electrodes that
would be implanted to provide blind people with artificial
vision and stimulate paralyzed body parts and so disabled
people could walk, talk or control a computer with their
thoughts.
"We plan to spend this $6.7 million to
further develop technology that we hope will someday help
blind individuals see, allow paraplegics to stand and
eventually walk, and let people with vocal cord problems
speak," says Richard Normann, a professor of bioengineering
and ophthalmology who is helping spearhead the project.
The money is in the form of four grants from the
National Institutes of Health to scientists at the
university's College of Engineering and University of Utah
Health Sciences Center. The projects receiving the funding are
intended to expand the Utah Electrode Array technology that
Normann first developed in 1989.
The Utah Electrode
Array is a silicon chip measuring a quarter-inch on each side
and containing 100 tiny electrodes in a 10-by-10 grid. The
array is implanted under the dura, which is the membrane
covering the brain.
Normann pursued commercial
development of the Utah Electrode Array by forming a spin-off
company name Bionic Technologies, LLC, which he and co-owner
Brian Hatt sold to Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc.
in 2002. Cyberkinetics incorporated the array and other
technologies into its BrainGate System, and implanted a Utah
Electrode Array into a paralyzed human patient for the first
time in June 2004. The electrodes, which poke into the part of
the brain controlling movement, allowed the patient to control
a computer screen cursor by thinking about moving the cursor.
Now, "we are trying to make the system even better" by
developing a "smart" wireless electrode array so it won't be
necessary for people using the device to have 100 wires
emerging from their skull, something that raises the
possibility of infection and also of getting the wires snagged
while the person is using a wheelchair, Normann says.
"To go from a bundle of wires sticking out of
somebody's head to a totally implantable system that is
invisible will be a major advance in this technology," he
adds.
Normann has spent more than a decade developing
the Utah Electrode Array so it eventually can be implanted in
the brains of blind people. They would wear a tiny
eyeglass-mounted camera to collect visual information, and
then relay it to electrodes in the brain's visual cortex. The
wireless array would make such an artificial vision system
easier for blind people to wear and use.
Here are
details of the four grants, which total as much as $6.658
million:
• The largest grant is for $2.816 million for
four years to Florian Solzbacher and Reid Harrison - both
assistant professors of electrical and computer engineering -
along with Normann.
They will develop a wireless
version of Utah Electrode Array, which will look much like the
original but will be slightly larger and "will have electronic
circuitry integrated into it to amplify the signals from each
of the 100 electrodes, do signal processing on those signals
[to filter out noise and other unimportant information] and
send those signals wirelessly to a receiver located outside of
the body," Normann says.
• A four-year grant of $2.048
million was requested by Normann; Gregory Clark, an associate
professor of bioengineering; Nicholas Brown, a research
assistant professor in orthopedic surgery and James Martin, an
assistant professor of exercise and sport science. Normann
received verbal confirmation the grant was approved, but says
the final amount may be somewhat smaller than what was
requested.
The researchers will use a version of the
electrode array that has electrodes of varying lengths, from
0.5 to 1.5 millimeters, so that when it is implanted on nerves
that control the legs or arms, it will come into contact with
multiple nerve fibers within a nerve and not just those at a
single depth within the nerve.
"This opens up a whole
bunch of new applications, one of which is to implant these
electrodes in the peripheral nerves of the legs of a
paraplegic," says Normann. "We believe that if we implant
three Utah Electrodes Arrays into three different nerves in
each leg - a total of six electrode arrays - and stimulate
them appropriately, we should be able to help the paraplegic
to get out of the wheelchair, stand up and eventually walk
using his or her muscles," although that won't be tried until
after pre-clinical feasibility studies.
Another use
would be to implant the array in nerves that control the
bladder, with the array run by a switch. This could allow a
paraplegic to regain control of urination.
• A $1.383
million grant for four years was awarded to bioengineering
Professor Patrick Tresco and Normann to make new Utah
Electrode Arrays even more biocompatible than they already
are.
So far, nonfunctioning arrays have been implanted
in nine temporal lobe epilepsy patients before they underwent
unrelated brain surgery for their disorder. The tests found no
problems. The arrays have been implanted in animals for up to
three years. Nevertheless, the body's immune system tends to
"wall off" any foreign material implanted in the brain, so
Tresco and Normann will develop new coatings for the array "so
the brain is even more unaware of the fact it has been
implanted," Normann says.
• The final grant, for
$411,000 over two years, was awarded to Marshall Smith - an
associate professor of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery -
and to Normann.
Smith says the project will determine
the feasibility of using a Utah Electrode Array to restore the
ability to speak in certain people by stimulating nerves that
control the vocal folds (also known as vocal cords), which are
the voice-producing folds of tissue in the voice box or
larynx.
The vocal folds open when we breathe and close
when we speak. Some people lose their voice when a vocal fold
is paralyzed by stroke; trauma; damage during surgery of the
neck, thyroid or chest; or a tumor that impinges on the nerve
to the vocal fold.
"This device is going to be used in
an attempt to reanimate the vocal folds to restore the normal
movement, both the opening and closing movement of the vocal
folds," Smith says.
The existing Utah Electrode Array
will be used in initial tests, but Smith says he hopes a
wireless version ultimately will be available to help restore
speech.
Scientists at the New York State Department of
Health recently gained publicity for a noninvasive method of
allowing paralyzed people to control computers or other
devices by reading brain signals using 64 electrodes in a cap
placed on the scalp. Its major advantage is that nothing needs
to be surgically implanted.
But Normann says the
method has a big disadvantage, namely, that signals from nerve
cells in the brain are weak and "smeared" together by the fact
that the skull and scalp jumble the signals, meaning a
paralyzed person using the device could control a computer or
other device only very slowly and with considerable training.
Implanted electrodes can more precisely "listen" to
individual nerve cells and record their activity, allowing
paralyzed people to control computers or their own limbs much
more quickly, Normann says.
University of Utah Public
Relations
201 S Presidents Circle, Room 308
Salt Lake
City, Utah 84112-9017
801-581-6773 fax: 585-3350
http://www.utah.edu/unews
Contacts:
Richard Normann
professor of bioengineering and
ophthalmology
normann@utah.edu
office:
801-581-7645
cellular: 801-673-5589
Lee
Siegel
science news specialist
University of Utah Public
Relations
leesiegel@ucomm.utah.edu
office:
801-581-8993
cellular: 801-244-5399
University of
Utah
For more information on epilepsy click here.
For more information on stroke click here.
Huge database of hospitals world wide .
|
| Save time! Get the latest medical news in your email every
week with our newsletter. | |
EurekAlert! - Disease in the Developing World Portal. click
here.
Contact Our Medical News Editors
For any corrections of factual information, or to contact the
editors please use our feedback
form.
Please send any medical news or health news press
releases to:
|
|
