The best way to predict the future is to invent it. “Fifty years out, I think we will have largely eliminated disability” patients spending months in rehabilitation rooms trying out prosthetic legs, but they are not as good as flash and bone of normal human being. And hence are unacceptable. Surely, there will be a time when medical technologists could build replacement parts that wouldn’t slow them down.
The goal of the NeuroMechanics & Biomechatronics section of biomechanical engineering is to improve the quality of life humans with a movement disorder. We develop new interventions and diagnostic techniques based on fundamental insight in (impaired) human motor control. This is accomplished through the combination of computational modelling of the neuromechanial system and experiments using techniques from system and control engineering, such as closed loop system identification. This enables the development of devices to contribute to the improved diagnosis and treatment of participants with movement disorders."...
Technologist developed advanced prosthetics that can be used to walk, run, dance climb stairs and even go for mountaineering and rock climbing. Center for Extreme Bionics, is setting out not just to reinvent themselves but the whole of society. Physical disabilities will be a thing of past. It is not just physical disabilities but many emotional and intellectual infirmities as well. The solutions lie not in biological or pharmacological cures but in novel electromechanical additions to our bodies. Scientists are part of a movement aimed at ushering medicine into a cyborg age. Engineers are building electronics-based systems that communicate directly with the human nervous system, promising radically new treatments for a variety of ailments and conditions, both physical and mental. While focus is more on giving people better control of their prosthetic limbs, it is equally possible to give patients better control of their emotions. One promising experiment targets depression with deep brain stimulation (DBS), in which electrodes implanted in the brain send steady pulses of electricity to certain problematic neural areas. Others area of development is to compensate for intellectual deficits & to build a memory-augmenting prosthetic.
Surprising range of afflictions can be most effectively treated by learning the electrical language that the brain uses to govern our movements, moods, and memories. It’s entirely possible that neural engineers may be fluent enough to mimic those instructions, allowing them to repair a human being’s faulty systems by rewiring them.
The body is electric. Neurons in the brain send out pulses of voltage when they “fire,” and the patterns of their pulses make up our sensations, our musings, and our actions. The electric signals generated in the brain also travel through the spinal cord and along the peripheral nerves to instruct the body’s muscles and organs. Medicine primarily relied on pharmaceuticals that could chemically alter the action of neurons or other cells in the body, but with the help of extreme bionics health care may be defined more by electroceuticals: novel treatments that will use pulses of electricity to regulate the activity of neurons, or devices that interface directly with our nerves.
Advanced prosthetic legs will allow amputees to control a titanium-and-plastic limb as naturally as they would a flesh-and-blood leg. The goal is to record and understand the brain’s commands and then to send those instructions to the prosthetic. Early version of such integrated devices are already under test, in that patients flexed the muscles around his knee as if they were taking a step; then an electromyograph captured the electric signal in those muscles and translated it into a digital signal that made sense to the microprocessors in his artificial foot. Even more direct connection between brain and machine will be possible, when one succeeds in connecting prosthetics directly to the peripheral nerves in amputee’s residual limbs. Not only could such a system relay more precise commands to the prosthetic, it could also send sensory information back up the nerves. And when amputees actually feel the grass beneath their prosthetic toes, it will change the way humans view this technology. When that happens it will not matter what [the prosthetic] is made of, it will be you.
The problem with traditional prostheses has always been that the wearer does most of the work, particularly when walking uphill or over uneven terrain. That may soon become a thing of the past. Bionic leg is a motorized, prosthetic system for transfemoral amputees. Technology is different because it works with, not against, the wearer. Unlike passive lower limbs, the new bionics knee is capable of both active flexion and extension, which makes it more energy-efficient and enables a more natural gait. Sensors in the amputee's shoes send signals to the knee's computer, which reproduces the appropriate walking pattern. Whether you want to climb stairs, walk quickly or slowly, sit or stand, it recognizes it in real time. The new bionic limb is now working on a motorized ankle and artificial muscles, as well as a neural implant to replace the bionic leg's external sensors.
Seattle Systems, in conjunction with Sandia National Laboratories, is still working on a Smart Integrated Lower Limb (SILL). The final version will incorporate multiple sensors that feed data on pressure, position, and speed to a central processor that will control the knee as well as the ankle, foot and socket. The leg socket will adjust to the changing diameter of the wearer's residual limb over the course of a day. Pressure sensors in the foot will deliver a mild buzz to electrodes attached to the residual limb. Using these cues, amputees will be able to train their limb to “feel” their prosthetic foot as it hits the ground. The basic concept of the SILL is common to the schools of thought behind all bionics: An artificial limb, like a healthy one, should function as a unit, rather than a group of parts. This is the definition of bionic technology, in the truest, simplest sense, ’Total Integration’ - a direct link between human and machine.
People with bodily disabilities typically have crushing emotional difficulty of depression and often don’t know when it started. Depression is just the state of mind they live with daily, stripping the present of all pleasure and the future of all hope. Neuroscientists discovered that existential dread can be treated by using electricity to alter the activity of neurons, and they are now putting that knowledge to use DBS (Deep Brain Simulation) as one of the most exciting experimental treatments for depression, and uses an implanted “brain pacemaker” that sends steady pulses of electricity to certain brain regions. It’s a technology that was pioneered to stop Parkinson’s patients’ tremors, but it’s now being explored for a dizzying array of neural and psychiatric disorders, including depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and PTSD.
Parkinson’s patients have had electrodes implanted in the motor control regions of their brains, where the stimulator’s pulses reduce the activity of neurons that are misfiring. But for disorders like depression, both the target for treatment and the mechanism of action are considerably less clear. “The limiting factor is actually the neuroscience, not the engineering, brain imaging is used for studies to pinpoint a particular region, Brodmann area 25, as overactive in depressed patients, and implanted the DBS device in this region of the brains of patients who haven’t responded to a slew of medications and therapies. While antidepressant medications typically take weeks to kick in, many patients in the DBS experiments have reported a shift in mood instantly—literally the moment that the device is turned on. Most patients have chosen to keep their DBS systems activated after the formal experiments ended
There are many variables that can influence the effectiveness of DBS; even if the trial had targeted the correct region, the timing of the pulses may have been off. The neuroscience initiatives in brain engineering are trying to develop new tools that can better record and analyze brain activity. The Human Brain Project is using supercomputers to simulate a complete human brain so as to better understand how it functions. DBS and other electrical techniques will be part of mainstream psychiatry, Scientists try to know as much about the workings of a neuron as engineers do about the workings of an electrode. Once physical and emotional disabilities have been conquered, the intellectual failures associated with aging will be a natural next target. In fact, cyborg may simply be the sensible and economical thing to do. We’re living longer, so aging problems, and cognitive problems in particular, are going to be more and more prevalent. It’s quite possible that Alzheimer’s patients will be equipped with memory prosthetics derived from the devices. Delicate electrodes inserted into a rat’s hippocampus, the brain structure responsible for encoding memory. The relationship between the input signals from neurons that process a brief learning experience and the output signals from neurons that send the information is deciphered Once correlations has been mapped between the two electrical patterns, one could record an input signal and predict the output signal—in other words, the memory. Elderly people could have devices that they switch on to remember something as trivial as where they put their car keys or as meaningful as their grandchildren’s names.
Synthetic body parts could easily become more desirable than biological parts, especially as people age. Such physical and cognitive enhancements could benefit individual humans. While engineering will play a central role in future medicine, biological treatments will hardly vanish. Those treatments will be shaped by the coming ubiquity of cheap genome sequencing, which will enable a new model of personalized genetic medicine. The change will start in the maternity ward, where newborns in their bassinets will receive full genome scans, resulting in complete printouts of their genetic vulnerabilities. Then, as those babies grow up and proceed through life, their physicians can design custom-made health-care regimens to ward off trouble and can prescribe the medications that their bodies will respond to best.
Dr. SANJAY GOMASTA
Associate Professor
Mechanical & Automation Engineering
ASET- AMITY UNIVERSITY GWALIOR
