Richard A. Andersen This is Me

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1. 1. VWN News: Machine Reads Abstract Thought

   www.virtualworldlets.net/Archi - [Cached]

   Published on: 1/3/2008   Last Visited: 2/4/2008

   Working with monkeys, researcher Richard Andersen and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena recorded signals from neurons used when the monkeys were making certain movements, then used a computer system to crunch out the core signals used from all of them - those were the ones determining movement.

2. 2. www.dailybulletin.com

   www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_ - [Cached]

   Published on: 10/24/2007   Last Visited: 10/24/2007

   > PASADENA - The monkeys in Richard Andersen's laboratory at Caltech practice mind control.
   
   Without so much as twitching a muscle, they can drag a cursor across a computer screen or flex a robotic arm.
   
   All it takes is a few tiny receptors in their brains, a bank of computers - and the insights of Andersen, a neuroscientist who this month was admitted into the prestigious Institute of Medicine.
   
   Over the course of his years of research, Andersen has worked to expand scientists' understanding of how the brain functions. Now he stands poised to apply what he's learned toward giving new freedom to people trapped in unresponsive bodies.
   
   Next year, pending approval from the Food and Drug Administration, Andersen plans to implant a small group of quadriplegics with devices that will give them - like the monkeys in his lab - new control over their worlds.
   
   Such patients normally are not be able to move their limbs, and many cannot speak or breathe on their own.
   
   If all goes well, Andersen said, "we would have them communicate through the computer, so they could do things like computer games, typing, e-mail, controlling their environment."
   ...
   In that time, Andersen said, "there have been big success stories, like the cochlear prosthetics" that have restored hearing for many by carrying sound information directly to the auditory nerve.
   
   "But even though this has been going on for a long time, it seems like recently it's just taken off," he said.
   ...
   "It's like listening to a group of people," Andersen said of recording the electrical firings in a parietal lobe's neurons. "Each one is saying one little bit of a paragraph, and you're putting them all together, so you can't just listen to one to get the whole story."
   
   But it takes surprisingly few brain cells, only about 40 or 50 amidst millions and millions, Andersen said, to capture a snapshot of the subject's intentions.
   
   The electric chatter is collected by a tiny array of electrodes, each one like a fine needle in a matchhead-sized pin cushion.
   
   These electrodes are implanted onto the brain's surface at a precise location and are connected to wires running through a hole in the skull to a bank of amplifiers, converters and computers.
   
   Shrinking the hulking size of many of these components is one of the many remaining challenges for the researchers.
   
   Among them, "one of the main issues is longevity of the device," said Igor Fineman, a Huntington Hospital neurosurgeon who works with Andersen to perform the surgeries.
   ...
   Hopefully, Andersen said, one day they will continue to function for a patient's lifetime.
   
   Fineman and Andersen won't be the first to implant neuroprosthestics into humans - the Massachusetts-based company Cybernetics has already tested similar technology on a small number of patients.
   ...
   Connecting directly to the parietal cortex could have some advantages, however, Andersen said, including faster reaction times.
   
   "I think in the long run, the field will target different parts of the brain to get different kinds of signals, so there will not be any particular area that's superior to all others," Andersen said.

3. 3. Proscenia Newsletter May 2, 2004

   www.proscenia.net/pronews/news - [Cached]

   Published on: 5/2/2004   Last Visited: 11/14/2007

   With approval from the Food and Drug Administration, a company called Cyberkinetics Inc. is planning a clinical trial of a system in which a tiny microchip will be implanted in the brains of five paralyzed people so they can operate a computer by thought alone. (Several research groups have already implanted devices in monkeys, allowing them to control cursors on computer screens or move robot arms using their brainpower alone.) CalTech neuroscientist Richard A. Andersen says, "Among many people in the field, there's a feeling now that the time is here for moving the technology to test in humans."