Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) open new horizons for the treatment of paralyzed persons, giving hope for the artificial restoration of lost physiological functions. Whereas BMI development has mainly focused on motor rehabilitation, recent studies have suggested that higher cognitive functions can also be deciphered from brain activity, bypassing low level planning and execution functions, and replacing them by computer-controlled effectors. This review describes the new generation of cognitive-motor BMIs, focusing on three BMI types: By outlining recent progress in developing these BMI types, we aim to provide a unified view of contemporary research towards the replacement of behavioral outputs of cognitive processes by direct interaction with the brain.
Keywords: BMI; Brain–machine interface; Decision making; Direct object control; ECoG; EEG; FDA; Human neurophysiology; LDA; LFP; M1; PRR; Percept decoding; STG; SVM; Speech; V1, V2, V3, V3A, V3B, V4; areas of the visual cortex; brain–machine interface; electrocorticography; electroencephalography; fMRI; flexible discriminant analysis; functional magnetic resonance imaging; linear discriminant analysis; local field potential; parietal reach region; primary motor cortex; rAC/MOF; rostral anterior cingulate and adjacent medial orbitofrontal cortex; superior temporal gyrus; support vector machine.
Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd.