Doctoral Dissertation Research: Understanding the Brain-Machine Interface in the Engineering of Prosthetic Technologies

遭受创伤性肢体丧失的人通常会经历退缩和感觉增强。失去了肢体的感觉反馈，大约80%的截肢者会经历强烈的、神秘的幻肢痛。科学家们正在开发大脑控制的假肢，使病人能够通过思想来移动他们的假肢，同时也能从环境中接收到感觉反馈（触觉）回到身体。然而，触摸、疼痛和感觉是难以量化的，是非常主观的体验，需要在患者、科学家和工程师之间进行微妙的沟通、合作和翻译。患者的感官体验，他们在空间中的身体感，以及他们对幻肢的意识，是如何影响这些生物技术的发展的？患者如何积极参与，甚至介入人机界面的设计？这些都是在这个项目中解决的问题，为生物技术的发展提供信息。除了为一名人类学研究生的培训提供资金外，该项目还将广泛传播其数据和发现，以帮助组织开发更有效的生物技术设计和临床实践，以改善残疾人的生活。研究生亚历山德拉·米德尔顿将在普林斯顿大学Joao Biehl博士的指导下，研究患者在人机界面设计中作为实验对象和积极的共同创新者的角色。为了了解脑机接口是如何设计的，该项目考察了患者经验和反馈在生物技术发展中的作用。这项人种学研究将在瑞典哥德堡进行，这是全球脑机接口假肢技术的工程中心。研究人员将跟随两项临床试验，陪同患者在实验室、诊所和家中使用实验性神经义肢。这些设备是世界上同类产品中第一个走出实验室，用于家庭日常生活的设备。人种学的重点将放在家庭作为科学形成的关键场所。通过在患者家中的参与观察以及与患者和家庭成员的访谈，研究人员将调查日常经验如何构成关于这些设备的使用和可能性的特定类型的专业知识。回到诊所和实验室，研究人员将追踪这些形式的专业知识如何为设计决策和治疗沟通提供信息。档案研究将审查使这种实验和发展成为可能的特定经济和社会背景。这项研究的结果将为人类视角和技术使用如何为实验室发展和临床交流提供信息提供洞见，并强调将残疾人纳入旨在改善其生活的技术设计的重要性。这些见解将为科学家、临床医生和患者之间的临床试验设计和实践以及人机关系提供信息。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

People suffering from traumatic limb loss often experience both withdrawal and heightening of sensation. Deprived of the limb's sensory feedback, roughly 80% of amputees experience intense, mysterious phantom limb pain. Scientists are developing brain-controlled prosthetics that enable patients to move their prosthetic limbs through thought, while also receiving sensory feedback (touch) from the environment back into the body. Yet touch, pain, and sensation are difficult to quantify, deeply subjective experiences, requiring a delicate process of communication, collaboration, and translation among patients, scientists, and engineers. How do patients' sensory experience, their sense of being in a body in space, and their awareness of their phantom limb, influence the development of such biotechnologies? How do patients actively participate, and even intervene, in the design of human-machine interfaces? These are the questions addressed in this project, to inform the development of biotechnologies. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, the project will broadly disseminate its data and findings to aid organizations in developing more effective biotechnology design and clinical practice to improve the lives of disabled individuals.Graduate student, Alexandra Middleton, under the supervision of Dr. Joao Biehl of Princeton University, will investigate the role of patients as simultaneously experimental subjects and active co-innovators in human-machine interface design. To understand how the brain-machine interface is engineered, the project examines the role of patient experience and feedback in the development of biotechnology. This ethnographic research will be conducted in Gothenburg, Sweden, a global epicenter of engineering brain-machine interface prosthetic technologies. The researcher will follow two clinical trials, accompanying patients as they engage with experimental neuroprosthetics in the laboratory, clinic, and their homes. These devices are the first in the world of their kind to travel outside the laboratory for home use in everyday life. Ethnographic focus will be placed on the home as a key site of science-in-the-making. Through participant observation in patients' homes and interviews with both patients and family members, the researcher will investigate how everyday experiences constitute a particular type of expertise about the use and possibilities of these devices. Circling back to the clinic and laboratory, the researcher will trace how these forms of expertise inform decisions in design as well as therapeutic communication. Archival research will examine the particular economic and social contexts that make such experimentation and development possible. Findings from this research will offer insight into the ways that human perspective and technology use can inform laboratory development and clinical communication, as well as highlighting the importance of involving disabled individuals in the design of technologies aimed at enhancing their lives. These insights will inform clinical trial design and practice among scientists, clinicians, and patients, as well as human-machine relations generally.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.