Neural Prosthesis for Proprioception

Completed Project (2010-2014)

Research Team: Ian Williams (PhD thesis) and Timothy Constandinou
Funding: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) DTA

Sensory feedback from the body is key to enabling fine motor control, natural (low cognitive load) movement and non-visual awareness of the position of your body. Individuals with prosthetic limbs or suffering from certain types of neural damage lack this proprioceptive feedback in the affected body areas and as such struggle to learn to control them and are unlikely to achieve high levels of coordination. This research is investigating the provision of artificial proprioceptive feedback from a prosthetic limb by direct electrical stimulation of nerves using a neural implant.

Outcomes

The research focused on developing technology to provide a user with intuitively understood information. As such the project created software to translate artificial sensor data into signals analogous to those naturally occurring in the human body. Also, the research created neural implant electronics with the performance necessary to safely stimulate the appropriate nerves.

Publications

2014

  • Luan, S., Williams, I., Nikolic, K., & Constandinou, T. G. (2014). Neuromodulation: present and emerging methods. Frontiers in neuroengineering, 7.
  • Williams, I., & Constandinou, T. G. (2014). Computationally efficient modeling of proprioceptive signals in the upper limb for prostheses: a simulation study. Frontiers in neuroscience, 8.

2013

  • Williams, I., & Constandinou, T. G. (2013). An energy-efficient, dynamic voltage scaling neural stimulator for a proprioceptive prosthesis. Biomedical Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on, 7(2), 129-139.
  • Williams, I., & Constandinou, T. G. (2013). Modelling muscle spindle dynamics for a proprioceptive prosthesis. In Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2013 35th Annual International Conference of the IEEE, pp. 1923-1926.
  • Williams, I., & Constandinou, T. G. (2013). An energy-efficient, dynamic voltage scaling neural stimulator for a proprioceptive prosthesis. in Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), IEEE International Symposum on, 1091-1094.