ITR/Comp Bio: The Computer Science of Biologically Embedded Systems

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

EIA- 0113679 Black, MichaelBrown University ITR/SY: The Computer Science of Biologically-Embedded SystemsBiologically-embedded systems that directly couple artificial computational devices with neural systems are emerging as a new area of information technology research. The physical structure and adaptability of the human brain make these biologically-embedded systems quite different from computational systems typically studied in Computer Science.Fundamentally, biologically-embedded systems must make inferences about the behavior of a biological system based on measurements of neural activity that are indirect, ambiguous, and uncertain. Moreover these systems must adapt to short- and long-term changes in neural activity of the brain. These problems are addressed by a multi-disciplinary team in the context of developing a robot arm that is controlled by simultaneous recordings from neurons in the motor cortex of awake behaving monkeys. The goal is to probabilistically model the behavior of these neurons as a function of arm motion and then reconstruct continuous arm trajectories based on the neural activity. To do so, the project will exploit mathematical and computational techniques from computer vision, image processing, and machine learning.This work will enhance scientific knowledge about how to design and build new types of hybrid human/computer systems, will explore new devices to assist the severely disabled, will address the information technology questions raised by these biologically-embedded systems, and will contribute to the understanding of neural coding.