CMU Neural Engineering Virtual Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Lee E. Miller, Professor of Neuroscience, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University
Abstract: Existing intracortical Brain Computer Interfaces (iBCIs), are remarkable, but require the user to be wired to stationary equipment and allow only limited, intermittent control of the motion of a VR avatar or a disembodied robotic limb. A number of years ago we developed an iBCI that used muscle activity predictions to control stimulation of the temporarily paralyzed muscles of a monkey’s hand. This “Functional Electrical Stimulation” (FES) iBCI allowed the monkeys to control not only the movement of their fingers, but also to exert force, more nearly like the natural control of hand movement than is possible with other existing iBCIs. Beyond the ability to restore voluntary limb movement, there is evidence that tight synchrony between attempted movement and peripheral neuromuscular stimulation may invoke neural plasticity that could accelerate recovery from an actual spinal cord injury. In this talk, I will describe the basic work that led to our proof-of-concept in monkeys, and our further development of the FES iBCI decoder that is applicable to a broader range of the activities of daily living. Finally, I will describe our most recent efforts to translate this technology to humans with spinal cord injury.
About the Speaker: Lee E. Miller is a Professor in the Departments of Neuroscience, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University. He received the Ph.D. degree in Physiology from Northwestern University in 1989, then completed two years of postdoctoral training in the Department of Medical Physics, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He was inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2016 and was the president of the Society for the Neural Control of Movement from 2015 - 2023. Dr. Miller has had a career-long interest in the motor and sensory signals that are generated by single neurons in the brains of monkeys during arm and hand movement. His early work was devoted to studying these signals in the brainstem, cerebral cortex, and cerebellum, and their relation to muscle activity. In the past 20 years, Dr. Miller’s lab has increasingly focused on translational research, in particular, the development of intracortical brain computer interface technology to restore limb movement to paralyzed patients. His interdisciplinary approach has led to productive collaborations locally, nationally, and internationally. Most recently he has begun working with humans with spinal cord injury as part of the Cortical Bionics Consortium. He has authored over 140 manuscripts, book chapters, and review articles.