A Robotic Arm Controlled by the Mind

Depending on what electrode they stimulate on,

there are different sensations I can feel

across different points on my hand.

So sometimes it's pressure,

sometimes it's just a tingle, warmth.

The first time it was really cool.

It's kinda like, Did that really just happen?

Now it's just second nature.

When I was 18, I was in a car accident, and broke my neck.

So now I'm a C5 quadriplegic.

When I was in the hospital in Pittsburgh,

they put me on a research registry.

So they gave me a call and were like,

Hey, we think you might be interested in this.

I was like, Yeah, robots are cool.

So.

[Woman] Yeah, I don't know, they're just now...

[Nathan] I'm not going to [mumbles].

Nathan first volunteered for surgery,

so he had to go in and have neurosurgery

and spend a week in the hospital.

After he recovered from the neurosurgery,

he's pretty much been coming here three times a week.

He spends four or five hours here each time he comes.

He has been implanted with microelectrode rays

in his motor and somatosensory cortex.

You can see that we are recording neural signals

from the motor cortex, and we are decoding these signals

so that he can control a robotic arm.

[Woman] It like turns on, and then just like...

[Nathan] Oh, okay.

It's not the best, it would look like in blue.

Okay.

[Jeff] Essentially, he thinks about moving his arm,

moving his hand.

And so different neurons will be more or less active

as he thinks about moving in different directions,

and as we record from a whole population of those neurons,

we can essentially decode which direction

he is thinking about.

Whether he's thinking about opening or closing the hand,

moving his wrist,

and turn that into a control signal for the robot.

[slow pulsating music]

Alright, y'all ready?

[pulsating music building in tempo]

He wants to help other people.

Everybody in the room is testing Nathan,

everybody's been involved in this project

has as a goal to cure paralysis in one form or another.

From the very beginning he said,

You know, if no one does this then we're blowing a chance.

I hope that when people have a traumatic injury,

that they don't feel like their lives are ruined.

That one day there will be cures for things

like spinal cord injury.

If you have lost a limb,

you can get one that's maybe even better

than the one you had before.

[slow pulsating music]