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Monkeys Now Will Robotic Arm to Feed Themselves
Researchers hope the technology will one day enable maimed and paralyzed people to regain control of everyday actions like eating, drinking and combing their hair.
In the experiment, small probes, the width of a human hair, were inserted into the monkeys' primary motor cortex - the region of the brain that controls movement.
(Probes are flexible slender surgical instrument used to explore wounds or body cavities.)Thereafter computer software was used to interpret the brain's electrical impulses and translate them into movement through the robotic arm.
This arm was jointed like a human arm and possessed a "gripper" that mimics a hand.
After some training, two monkeys - who had had their own arms restrained - were able to use the prosthetic limbs to feed themselves with marshmallows and chunks of fruit. The researchers said that the movements were fluid and natural.
The monkeys were able to use their brains to continuously change the speed and direction of the arm and the gripper, suggesting that the monkeys had come to regard the robotic arm as a part of their own bodies. The success rate of the experiment was 61%.
Writing in the journal Nature on Thursday, lead researcher Dr Andrew Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, reports: "The monkey learns by first observing the movement, which activates its brain cells as if it was doing it. It's a lot like sports training, where trainers have athletes first imagine that they are performing the movements they desire."
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