Equipment Proposal: Early Reach Plans in Parietal Cortex: Toward a Cortical Prosthetic for Arm Movements

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This award provides funds to purchase equipment and instrumentation that will form the basis for a new experimental facility for investigating the science of neural prosthetic arms at the Engineering Research Center for Neuromorphic Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. The equipment is being used in research to investigate how the cerebral cortex plans reaching-arms movements. The goal is to understand the underlying neurobiology of the sensory-motor interface where plans first form. This understanding is the basis for cortically controlled prosthetic devices. The equipment will enable exploration of how parietal reach region neurons in the posterior parietal cortex plan real and virtual arm movements by recording electrical activity from many neurons simultaneously (using an implanted multi-electrode array) while monkeys reach to remembered visual targets. The electrical signals will then be used to drive a virtual arm in a computer model/simulation. The understanding of how the neurons work to move the arm will be the basis for control of a real prosthetic arm.