Nat Med. 2015 Oct;21(10):1142-5. doi: 10.1038/nm.3953. Epub 2015 Sep 28.

Clinical translation of a high-performance neural prosthesis.

Gilja V^1,^2,^3,⁴, Pandarinath C^1,^2,⁵, Blabe CH¹, Nuyujukian P^1,^2,⁵, Simeral JD^3,^6,^7,⁸, Sarma AA^3,^6,^7,⁸, Sorice BL⁸, Perge JA^3,^6,⁷, Jarosiewicz B^6,^7,⁹, Hochberg LR^3,^6,^7,^8,¹⁰, Shenoy KV^2,^5,^11,^12,¹³, Henderson JM^1,⁵.

Author information

1: Department of Neurosurgery, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
2: Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
3: School of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
4: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of CaliforniaSan Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
5: Stanford Neurosciences Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
6: Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology, Rehabilitation R&D Service, Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
7: Brown Institute for Brain Science, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
8: Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
9: Department of Neuroscience, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA.
10: Neurology, Harvard Medical School, Boston,Massachusetts, USA.
11: Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
12: Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
13: Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.

Abstract

Neural prostheses have the potential to improve the quality of life of individuals with paralysis by directly mapping neural activity to limb- and computer-control signals. We translated a neural prosthetic system previously developed in animal model studies for use by two individuals with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis who had intracortical microelectrode arrays placed in motor cortex. Measured more than 1 year after implant, the neural cursor-control system showed the highest published performance achieved by a person to date, more than double that of previous pilot clinical trial participants.