The Man with the Bionic Brain

by Jon Mukand

Book notes - not a review or a book report, but facts I want to remember and thoughts I had while reading

• Matt Nagle born1979 quad2001 braingate2004-2005 died2007

• Jon Mukand rehab doctor, clinical investigator for braingate

• many others
• Cyberkinetics (Foxboro MA) Braingate team:

  • John Donoghue founder

  • Tim Surgenor president

  • Burke Barrett VP clinical

  • Gerhard Friehs Surgeon(?)

  • Shawn Wery Clinical research manager

  • Abe Caplan Clinical engineer

Braingate implant 10x10 "1mm wires", about 1.5mm square?

• wire bundle to outside contacts

• should be an on-chip electrode array with driven shield under electrode pads for < 1fF contact C

  • MOSIS can make single chips. With a low voltage (0.5V) deep submicron process, it could consume nanowatts and be powered and communicate with a coil, like a cochlear implant.
• someday, these should be chemical binding/unbinding and donate electron processes, sensing neural signals, not fields
  • voltage field in device to "erase" the binding molecules.
  • sensors like this are being used to detect DNA. Work going on at Sharp Labs Vancouver
• electrodes fail over time. Scar tissue wrapping the contacts?

Scar tissue is the big problem. Making any implanted device "bio-friendly" and "neuro-attractive" requires mimicking cell walls and generating the molecular messengers to attract the right connections and chemically signal neighboring cells to function properly.

Matt wanted "stem cell" repair. Seems unlikely without some kind of very sophisticated guided neuron-to-neuron repair. Chances are, every axon severed is dead on one end of the break, because it is not connected to the nerve cell nucleus. This will require growing nerve fibers that are a good fraction of a meter long, and connecting them to just the right place. If the infant training process that builds the motor area and makes specific connections from brain to limb is heavily dependent on aptosis instead of specific genetically encoded pathways (unlikely, DNA is not large enough), forget about it, you will need to replicate the whole learning process, or lay down complete nets from cortex to muscle.

Matt's eyes should have been the mouse, and the implant the 3 buttons.

What if instead of trying to reconnect the unconnectable, we attach each muscle to an electrically controlled nerve stimulator, and control the entire musculature of the body from a computer, programmed to walk, eliminate on command, and exercise the body? If we can keep a quad standing and walking most of the time, breathing, and turning themselves in their sleep, we can reduce pressure ulcers, burn excess calories, and indirectly give the individual mobility.

The program could be selected with head muscle movements, speech, eye movements, or an implant. Assume a limited environment with external transponders for position, body orientation, etc. A quad might be limited to roaming a care center, but that would be a heck of a lot better than being a head in a bed.