Wearable brain and spinal cord imaging for real-world neuroscience

大脑和脊髓在很大程度上相互依赖，这意味着对其中一个的损害会影响到另一个，但在人类身上研究这些影响非常困难。到目前为止，这两种系统的研究在很大程度上是孤立的，或者要求人们完全静止地躺在扫描隧道中。我们最近开发了一种可穿戴扫描仪，包括一个头盔和一个背包，可以在一定程度上运动。虽然这对被扫描的人来说要舒服得多，但对移动的主要障碍是电缆，它很密集，在人身后拖着。这个提议的目的是使这个可穿戴系统有效地无线化，允许完全自由的运动。如果我们能够直接成像大脑和脊髓如何相互作用，这个新系统将对许多使人衰弱的疾病（如脊髓损伤、中风、痴呆）有特别重要的意义，这些疾病可以更好地诊断和治疗。

The brain and spinal cord rely heavily on each other, meaning that damage to one affects the other, but it has been very difficult to study these effects in humans. Until now these two systems have been studied largely in isolation, or have required people to lie perfectly still in a scanning tunnel. We recently developed a wearable scanner, consisting of a helmet and backpack that can be worn with some degree of movement possible.While this is much more comfortable for the person being scanned, the main hindrance to movement is the cabling, which is dense and trails behind the person. The purpose of this proposal is to make this wearable system effectively wireless, allowing complete freedom of movement. This new system will be especially important for the many debilitating conditions (such as spinal cord injury, stroke, dementia) that could be better diagnosed and treated if we could directly image how the brain and spinal cord interact.