Neurotech Professionals Join Technology to Improve Cognitive Function Workshop

Staff Report

Nearly 100 people participated in the Technology to Improve Cognitive Function Workshop in Washington, D.C. last month. The event was sponsored by the Interagency Committee on Disability Research. This U.S. government entity brings together researchers, policy makers, consumer advocates, and representatives of several different federal agencies involved with disabilities.

The workshop began with some welcoming remarks from Robert Cresanti, undersecretary of Commerce for Technology, and an overview by Ephraim Gilnert from the National Science Foundation, who chairs the subcommittee on technology.

Keynote speaker Gerhard Fischer from the University of Colorado spoke of new technologies that could do for cognitive impairments as eyeglasses do for visual impairments. “As we live in a world of ubiquitous technology, intelligence and cognition are not located within the individual human mind but are distributed within complex socio-technical systems, providing opportunities to improve the life for people with cognitive disabilities,” he said.

Fischer is director of the Center for LifeLong Learning & Design at the university. The center is developing environments that support persons with cognitive disabilities and their caregivers to allow them to perform tasks that they would not be able to accomplish unaided. The objective is to make people with cognitive disabilities more independent by empowering them to have more choices, live by themselves, use transportation systems, interact with others, and perform a variety of domestic tasks. A complementary objective is to empower caregivers with a deeper understanding about the needs of those being supported. Both of these objectives will lead to the creation of more powerful media, technologies, and communities to support new levels of distributed intelligence that benefit society at large.

Several neurotechnology professionals also participated in the workshop. Neurotech Business Report editor James Cavuoto gave an overview of current and future neurotech products that have application in the cognitive disabilities market.

Eric Sellers from the Wadsworth Center in New York, gave attendees an overview of brain-computer-interface technology and disucssed current and potential applications for people with cognitive disabilities. Sellers explained that BCIs can produce communication that does not depend on neuromuscular activity and thus provide an alternative means of communication for individuals with severe motor impairments such as ALS who cannot use conventional assistive communication devices.

Over the past several months, the Wadsworth Center BCI system has been developed to a point where individuals can be provided with dedicated systems to be used in their homes. The Wadsworth team can monitor user performance remotely, update parameters as necessary, and conduct periodic site visits. Sellers described an early ALS user who was previously using an eye gaze system that became increasingly unreliable as his disease progressed. He has now abandoned the eye gaze system and is using the BCI system for six to eight hours per day for email and other computer tasks. In the coming months, several more users will be enrolled, he said.

Several studies have shown that learning to modulate certain features of the EEG can improve performance in a variety of tasks; using a BCI may similarly enhance performance. In addition, it might contribute to the preservation of cognitive function in people with ALS or other movement disorders that limit executive function. According to Sellers, as BCI technology continues to develop and its capability expands, it may become valuable for additional groups of people with less severe disabilities, or even able-bodied individuals in specific situations.

Another neurotech researcher at the workshop was Ted Berger, professor of biomedical engineering and neuroscience and director of the Center for Neural Engineering at University of Southern California. Berger presented results of his multi-disciplinary project developing a microchip-based hippocampal prosthesis. Damage to the hippocampus is frequently associated with epilepsy, stroke, and Alzheimer’s disease, and is considered to underlie the memory deficits related to these neurological conditions.

Berger’s multi-laboratory team is looking at how the hippocampus encodes information, and attempting to formulate biologically realistic models of neural system dynamics. Berger described his microchip implementation and general strategies for creating hybrid neuron-silicon interfaces.

Through bi-directional communication with other neural tissue that normally provides the inputs and outputs to and from a damaged hippocampal area, Berger’s biomimetic model could serve as a neural prosthesis for lost memory/cognitive function. In Berger’s animal trials, the CA3 region of the hippocampal slice is surgically removed, and is replaced by a microchip model of CA3 nonlinear dynamics—the “hybrid” hippocampal circuit displays normal physiological properties.

David Rose from the Center for Applied Special Technology reviewed some new findings in brain research about learning, or failing to learn, within the context of schools and schooling. He then described some new kinds of learning environments that use digital media to reduce the rigidities and disabilities that are common in traditional curricula.

Daniel Bogen, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvannia, said that there are many technologies used in industrial and consumer applications that could be applied to improving cognitive function. He argued that a new research paradigm is needed that can accommodate the multidimensional reality of technology for improving cognitive function. “One should not expect that isolated technological devices, by themselves, can solve the problem of cognitive impairments; rather, one should strive for socio-cultural systems that include technology, he said.”