Description du projet
La prochaine génération d’interface cerveau-machine
Une interface cerveau-machine (ICM) est un dispositif qui traduit les informations neuronales en commandes qui permettent de contrôler du matériel externe comme des prothèses. En dépit de la grande promesse qu’offrent les ICM à l’heure d’améliorer la vie des personnes souffrant d’une perte des fonctions motrices, leur mise en œuvre est entravée par la formation supervisée que celles-ci doivent suivre. Financé par le Conseil européen de l’innovation, le projet NEMO BMI vise à remédier à cette situation en développant un système sans assistance. Les chercheurs simplifieront la conception des ICM en mettant à profit des avancées technologiques et des solutions miniaturisées. Le dispositif qui en résulte, facile à utiliser, devrait améliorer la qualité de vie d’un grand nombre de personnes souffrant de lésions de la moelle épinière.
Objectif
Nearly 746,000 people sustain a spinal cord injury every year, with dramatic human, societal and economical cost, leading to impairment or even complete loss of motor functions. Motor Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMIs) translate brain neural signals into commands to external effectors. BMIs raise hopes that limb mobility may be restored, providing patients with control over orthoses, prostheses, or over their own limbs using electrical stimulation. In spite of spectacular results, taking neuroprosthetics into daily practice has proven difficult. Currently, neuroprosthetics are restricted to assisted trials in laboratories, and require regular retraining of a decoder in a supervised manner within controlled environments. They include various components (recording device, antennas, base station, computers connected to effectors, etc.) that are complicated to install and to use. Building on the consortium's unique experience in clinical chronic BMIs, the project will address major methodological and technological breakthroughs to achieve the first assistance-free motor neuroprosthetics system. NEMO BMI project will conduct the exploration of assistance-free and easy to use portable neuroprosthetics including wireless neuronal activity recorder, a real-time neuronal activity decoder based on integrated technologies, and a spinal cord stimulator. A first objective is the crucial improvement of usability, by introducing an auto-adaptive framework to train the decoder in an adaptive manner during the neuroprosthetics unsupervised use. Brain-guided spinal cord stimulation activating patients’ limbs with an automatic stimulus pattern optimization is the second project objective. A third objective is the exploration of miniaturized embedded solutions by taking advantage of a novel neuromorphic hardware architecture. NEMO BMI technologies will be studied offline and online in two ongoing clinical trials, and will be critical to specify the next-generation assistance-free BMI.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.3.1 - The European Innovation Council (EIC) Main Programme
Régime de financement
HORIZON-EIC - HORIZON EIC GrantsCoordinateur
75015 PARIS 15
France