Dr. Leigh Hochberg, pioneer in brain-computer technology, receives 2022 VA Magnuson Award

Leigh Hochberg, M.D., Ph.D., FAAN, FANA, director of the VA Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology (CfNN), has received the 2022 VA Paul B. Magnuson Award for his get the job done to enhance the lives of Veterans and others who encounter stroke, ALS, spinal cord injury and neurological sickness. The Magnuson Award acknowledges superb achievement in VA rehabilitation exploration.

Hochberg and his colleagues at CfNN are building chopping-edge systems to guide Veterans with paralysis to navigate their environments and communicate with some others. Hochberg’s analysis system brings together engineering, neuroscience, and medical drugs to design and style new systems to assistance men and women with neurological damage or sickness stay a fuller existence. (Warning: Investigational Device. Minimal by federal legislation to investigational use.)

Dr. Leigh Hochberg

Exams brain-computer interfaces

Hochberg is a researcher at the Providence VA Medical Heart in Rhode Island, with additional than 17 years’ expertise. He is director of the BrainGate medical trials – done by major laboratories in neuroscience and neuroengineering – which are focused on creating and screening intracortical brain-computer interfaces (BCI).

In 2006, Hochberg posted groundbreaking benefits from the 1st two contributors in the BrainGate scientific trial. He and his colleagues demonstrated that persons with cervical spinal twine personal injury could control a computer system cursor or robotic arm utilizing their mind activity alone. Investigators implanted electrodes in participants’ motor cortex to transmit neural impulses to a computer system, allowing the participants to management external units just by pondering about the motion of their personal hand.

“This breakthrough in human neuroscience set the stage for intracortical BCI investigate and highlighted the opportunity to aid men and women with impairments of interaction and mobility,” notes Dr. Krishna Shenoy, director of the Neural Prosthetic Techniques Lab at Stanford College.

*Listen to Dr. Hochberg and a colleague make clear how the investigational BrainGate technique functions.

A typing pace of 90 people for every moment

In 2021, the BrainGate crew at Stanford and the Howard Hughes Health-related Institute demonstrated an intracortical BCI that decoded mind exercise and displayed the meant handwriting of a study participant who was not able to use his palms. The participant achieved a typing speed of 90 figures for each minute, with 94{18fa003f91e59da06650ea58ab756635467abbb80a253ef708fe12b10efb8add} accuracy. The study, revealed in “Nature,” was regarded internationally as a breakthrough in the speed and flexibility built possible by way of BCI-enabled conversation.

*Enjoy a online video demonstrating BCI-enabled handwriting by a BrainGate examine participant.

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