Supervisors

Ravi Vaidyanathan (Mechanical Engineering)
Peter Brown (Brain Network Dynamics Unit, University of Oxford)

Brain-machine interface (BMI) seeks to establish robust links between the central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral devices and/or robotic mechanisms (e.g. medical implants, neural stimulators, robotic limbs, etc).   An exciting new direction in this field involves the use of electrodes implanted in the brain for interface, ideally supporting paralyzed or neurally impaired patients by bypassing damaged regions of the brain.  The goal of this study is to establish new forms of invasive recording in the brain for human augmentation and robotic assist.  It will involve recording experiments to quantify the relationship between electrical activity in key regions the brain and motor control, signal processing to extract features related to intended movement, and real-time robot control (grasping) experiments triggered by invasively recorded neural activity.

This project is co-supervised through the Medical Research Council Brain Network Dynamics Unit at the University of Oxford.