| Miguel Angelo Laporta Nicolelis | |
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| Born | São Paulo, Brazil |
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| Fields | Neuroscientist |
Miguel Angelo Laporta Nicolelis, MD, PhD, is a Brazilian physician and scientist, best known for his pioneering work in "reading monkey thought". He and his colleagues implanted electrode arrays into a monkey's brain that were able to detect the monkey's motor intent and thus able to control reaching and grasping movements performed by a robotic arm. This was possible by decoding signals of hundreds of neurons recorded in volitional areas of the cerebral cortex while the monkey played with a hand-held joystick to move a shape in a video game. These signals were sent to the robot arm, which then mimicked the monkey's movements and thus controlled the game. After a while the monkey realised that thinking about moving the shape was enough and it no longer needed to move the joystick. So it let go of the joystick and controlled the game purely through thought. A system in which brain signals directly control an artificial actuator is commonly referred to as brain-machine interface or brain-computer interface.
On January 15, 2008, Dr. Nicolelis's lab saw a monkey implanted with a new BCI successfully control a robot walking on a treadmill in Kyoto, Japan. The monkey could see the robot, named CB, on a screen in front of him, and was rewarded for walking in sync with the robot (which was under the control of the monkey). After an hour the monkey's treadmill was turned off, but he was able to continue to direct the robot to walk normally for another few minutes, indicating that a part of the brain not sufficient to induce a motor response in the monkey had become dedicated to controlling the robot, as if it were an extension of itself.
ũPequena biografia == ==
Nicolelis recebeu um grau de MD da Universidade de São Paulo Medical School, em 1984. Doutorou-se em 1988/89, no Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas da Universidade de São Paulo.
Atualmente, Nicolelis é um professor de Neurobiologia, Engenharia Biomédica e Psicologia and Brain Sciences, e ele e Craig Henriquez, um professor em Engenharia Biomédica, servem como co-diretores do Centro de Neuroengenharia, Duke University Medical Center (desde 2001).
Ele também está envolvido atualmente com a criação de um centro internacional de pesquisa em neurociência Natal, no estado do Rio Grande do Norte, o Instituto Internacional de Neurociências de Natal ( IINN).
Em 2004, ele foi escolhido pela revista Science como um dos 100 cientistas mais influentes do ano. Ele também aparece no 2004Scientific Americanlista dos mais influentes líderes da investigação do ano. ((Ref | SciAm2004))
Sua mãe, Giselda Laporta Nicolelis, é um importante escritor brasileiro de literatura infantil.Ele é neurocientista.
Selected Publications on Brain-Machine Interface
- Lebedev, M.A., Carmena, J.M., O’Doherty, J.E., Zacksenhouse, M., Henriquez, C.S., Principe, J.C., Nicolelis, M.A.L. (2005) Cortical ensemble adaptation to represent actuators controlled by a brain machine interface. J. Neurosci. 25: 4681-4693.
- Santucci, D.M., Kralik, J.D., Lebedev , M.A., Nicolelis, M.A.L. (2005) Frontal and parietal cortical ensembles predict single-trial muscle activity during reaching movements. Eur. J. Neurosci., 22: 1529-1540.
- Carmena, J.M., Lebedev, M.A., Crist, R.E., O’Doherty, J.E., Santucci, D.M., Dimitrov, D.F., Patil, P.G., Henriquez, C.S., Nicolelis, M.A.L. (2003) Learning to control a brain-machine interface for reaching and grasping by primates. PLoS Biology, 1: 193-208.
- Nicolelis MA (2003) Brain-machine interfaces to restore motor function and probe neural circuits. Nat Rev Neurosci. 4: 417-422.
- Wessberg J, Stambaugh CR, Kralik JD, Beck PD, Laubach M, Chapin JK, Kim J, Biggs SJ, Srinivasan MA, Nicolelis MA. (2000) Real-time prediction of hand trajectory by ensembles of cortical neurons in primates. Nature 16: 361-365.
Additional references
- ^ "The Scientific American 50". Scientific American. December 2004. pp. 46. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D5CA6-D59B-118F-91DD83414B7F0000&pageNumber=2&catID=9.
External links
- Nicolelis Lab
- CV and awards
- New Scientist 2003
- New Scientist 2004
- International Institute for Neuroscience of Natal (IINN)
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