scholarly journals Direct Communication Between Brains: A Systematic PRISMA Review of Brain-To-Brain Interface

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang S. Nam ◽  
Zachary Traylor ◽  
Mengyue Chen ◽  
Xiaoning Jiang ◽  
Wuwei Feng ◽  
...  

This paper aims to review the current state of brain-to-brain interface (B2BI) technology and its potential. B2BIs function via a brain-computer interface (BCI) to read a sender's brain activity and a computer-brain interface (CBI) to write a pattern to a receiving brain, transmitting information. We used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) to systematically review current literature related to B2BI, resulting in 15 relevant publications. Experimental papers primarily used transcranial magnetic stimulation (tMS) for the CBI portion of their B2BI. Most targeted the visual cortex to produce phosphenes. In terms of study design, 73.3% (11) are unidirectional and 86.7% (13) use only a 1:1 collaboration model (subject to subject). Limitations are apparent, as the CBI method varied greatly between studies indicating no agreed upon neurostimulatory method for transmitting information. Furthermore, only 12.4% (2) studies are more complicated than a 1:1 model and few researchers studied direct bidirectional B2BI. These studies show B2BI can offer advances in human communication and collaboration, but more design and experiments are needed to prove potential. B2BIs may allow rehabilitation therapists to pass information mentally, activating a patient's brain to aid in stroke recovery and adding more complex bidirectionality may allow for increased behavioral synchronization between users. The field is very young, but applications of B2BI technology to neuroergonomics and human factors engineering clearly warrant more research.

Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (12) ◽  
pp. 1411
Author(s):  
Shang-Ju Wu ◽  
Nicoletta Nicolaou ◽  
Martin Bogdan

Completely locked-in state (CLIS) patients are unable to speak and have lost all muscle movement. From the external view, the internal brain activity of such patients cannot be easily perceived, but CLIS patients are considered to still be conscious and cognitively active. Detecting the current state of consciousness of CLIS patients is non-trivial, and it is difficult to ascertain whether CLIS patients are conscious or not. Thus, it is important to find alternative ways to re-establish communication with these patients during periods of awareness, and one such alternative is through a brain–computer interface (BCI). In this study, multiscale-based methods (multiscale sample entropy, multiscale permutation entropy and multiscale Poincaré plots) were applied to analyze electrocorticogram signals from a CLIS patient to detect the underlying consciousness level. Results from these different methods converge to a specific period of awareness of the CLIS patient in question, coinciding with the period during which the CLIS patient is recorded to have communicated with an experimenter. The aim of the investigation is to propose a methodology that could be used to create reliable communication with CLIS patients.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 3949
Author(s):  
Lidia Wlodarczyk ◽  
Rafal Szelenberger ◽  
Natalia Cichon ◽  
Joanna Saluk-Bijak ◽  
Michal Bijak ◽  
...  

Several key issues impact the clinical practice of stroke rehabilitation including a patient’s medical history, stroke experience, the potential for recovery, and the selection of the most effective type of therapy. Until clinicians have answers to these concerns, the treatment and rehabilitation are rather intuitive, with standard procedures carried out based on subjective estimations using clinical scales. Therefore, there is a need to find biomarkers that could predict brain recovery potential in stroke patients. This review aims to present the current state-of-the-art stroke recovery biomarkers that could be used in clinical practice. The revision of biochemical biomarkers has been developed based on stroke recovery processes: angiogenesis and neuroplasticity. This paper provides an overview of the biomarkers that are considered to be ready-to-use in clinical practice and others, considered as future tools. Furthermore, this review shows the utility of biomarkers in the development of the concept of personalized medicine. Enhancing brain neuroplasticity and rehabilitation facilitation are crucial concerns not only after stroke, but in all central nervous system diseases.


Author(s):  
Yiwen Wang ◽  
Yuxiao Lin ◽  
Chao Fu ◽  
Zhihua Huang ◽  
Rongjun Yu ◽  
...  

Abstract The desire for retaliation is a common response across a majority of human societies. However, the neural mechanisms underlying aggression and retaliation remain unclear. Previous studies on social intentions are confounded by low-level response related brain activity. Using an EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) combined with the Chicken Game, our study examined the neural dynamics of aggression and retaliation after controlling for nonessential response related neural signals. Our results show that aggression is associated with reduced alpha event-related desynchronization (ERD), indicating reduced mental effort. Moreover, retaliation and tit-for-tat strategy use are also linked with smaller alpha-ERD. Our study provides a novel method to minimize motor confounds and demonstrates that choosing aggression and retaliation is less effortful in social conflicts.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (S1) ◽  
pp. 17-17
Author(s):  
Joseph B. Humphries ◽  
David T. Bundy ◽  
Eric C. Leuthardt ◽  
Thy N. Huskey

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The objective of this study is to determine the degree to which the use of a contralesionally-controlled brain-computer interface for stroke rehabilitation drives change in interhemispheric motor cortical activity. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Ten chronic stroke patients were trained in the use of a brain-computer interface device for stroke recovery. Patients perform motor imagery to control the opening and closing of a motorized hand orthosis. This device was sent home with patients for 12 weeks, and patients were asked to use the device 1 hour per day, 5 days per week. The Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) was performed at 2-week intervals to assess motor function improvement. Before the active motor imagery task, patients were asked to quietly rest for 90 seconds before the task to calibrate recording equipment. EEG signals were acquired from 2 electrodes—one each centered over left and right primary motor cortex. Signals were preprocessed with a 60 Hz notch filter for environmental noise and referenced to the common average. Power envelopes for 1 Hz frequency bands (1–30 Hz) were calculated through Gabor wavelet convolution. Correlations between electrodes were then calculated for each frequency envelope on the first and last 5 runs, thus generating one correlation value per subject, per run. The chosen runs approximately correspond to the first and last week of device usage. These correlations were Fisher Z-transformed for comparison. The first and last 5 run correlations were averaged separately to estimate baseline and final correlation values. A difference was then calculated between these averages to determine correlation change for each frequency. The relationship between beta-band correlation changes (13–30 Hz) and the change in ARAT score was determined by calculating a Pearson correlation. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Beta-band inter-electrode correlations tended to decrease more in patients achieving greater motor recovery (Pearson’s r=−0.68, p=0.031). A similar but less dramatic effect was observed with alpha-band (8–12 Hz) correlation changes (Pearson’s r=−0.42, p=0.22). DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: The negative correlation between inter-electrode power envelope correlations in the beta frequency band and motor recovery indicates that activity in the motor cortex on each hemisphere may become more independent during recovery. The role of the unaffected hemisphere in stroke recovery is currently under debate; there is conflicting evidence regarding whether it supports or inhibits the lesioned hemisphere. These findings may support the notion of interhemispheric inhibition, as we observe less in common between activity in the 2 hemispheres in patients successfully achieving recovery. Future neuroimaging studies with greater spatial resolution than available with EEG will shed further light on changes in interhemispheric communication that occur during stroke rehabilitation.


2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-187
Author(s):  
Anita Pollak ◽  
Małgorzata Chrupała-Pniak ◽  
Patrycja Rudnicka ◽  
Mateusz Paliga

Abstract Over the past decade work engagement has gained both business and academia attention. With growing number of studies and meta-analyses the concept of work engagement is one of the pillars of positive work and organizational psychology. This systematic review presents the current state of research on work engagement in Poland. Results confirmed that work-engagement studies have not yet reached the threshold to conduct meta-analysis. The review of measurement methods and synthesis of findings allows to identify strengths and gaps in Polish studies. Discussion of limitations and biases in current research is accompanied with urge to overcome them and develop thriving stream of research on work engagement.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Christopher Banks ◽  
Dan Foy ◽  
Boyoung Kim ◽  
Joanna Korman ◽  
Matthew Makel ◽  
...  

This paper briefly reviews the current state of meta-analytics research and suggests two innovations for dramatically increasing the efficiency and robustness of meta-analytic practice while simultaneously extending meta-analyses’ “shelf life” in the face of continually accumulating evidence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
D.A. Eremina

Using the study of cognitive functioning in patients with cardiovascular diseases paper discusses problems of changes in brain activity in patients with somatic diseases related to a main pathology and resulting from surgical treatment. Analysis of the current state of research in this area provided. Based on this analysis, promising areas for further research, such as development of methods for predicting an occurrence and development of cognitive impairment, organization of timely diagnosis of changes in cognitive activity, development of preventive and therapeutic measures, exploring the value of cognitive functioning for treatment adherence. In addition, paper discusses the methodological approaches and main organizational aspects of conducting such studies and indicates the most relevant methods for studying cognitive functioning in a cardiac surgery clinic.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Stiso ◽  
Marie-Constance Corsi ◽  
Javier Omar Garcia ◽  
Jean M Vettel ◽  
Fabrizio De Vico Fallani ◽  
...  

Motor imagery-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) use an individual’s ability to volitionally modulate localized brain activity, often as a therapy for motor dysfunction or to probe causal relations between brain activity and behavior. However, many individuals cannot learn to successfully modulate their brain activity, greatly limiting the efficacy of BCI for therapy and for basic scientific inquiry. Formal experiments designed to probe the nature of BCI learning have offered initial evidence that coherent activity across diverse cognitive systems is a hallmark of individuals who can successfully learn to control the BCI. However, little is known about how these distributed networks interact through time to support learning. Here, we address this gap in knowledge by constructing and applying a multimodal network approach to decipher brain-behavior relations in motor imagery-based brain-computer interface learning using magnetoencephalography. Specifically, we employ a minimally constrained matrix decomposition method -- non-negative matrix factorization -- to simultaneously identify regularized, covarying subgraphs of functional connectivity and behavior, and to detect the time-varying expression of each subgraph. We find that learning is marked by distributed brain-behavior relations: swifter learners displayed many subgraphs whose temporal expression tracked performance. Learners also displayed marked variation in the spatial properties of subgraphs such as the connectivity between the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain, and in the temporal properties of subgraphs such as the stage of learning at which they reached maximum expression. From these observations, we posit a conceptual model in which certain subgraphs support learning by modulating brain activity in networks important for sustaining attention. After formalizing the model in the framework of network control theory, we test the model and find that good learners display a single subgraph whose temporal expression tracked performance and whose architecture supports easy modulation of brain regions important for attention. The nature of our contribution to the neuroscience of BCI learning is therefore both computational and theoretical; we first use a minimally-constrained, individual specific method of identifying mesoscale structure in dynamic brain activity to show how global connectivity and interactions between distributed networks supports BCI learning, and then we use a formal network model of control to lend theoretical support to the hypothesis that these identified subgraphs are well suited to modulate attention.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuti Chakraborty ◽  
Gianluca Saetta ◽  
Colin Simon ◽  
Bigna Lenggenhager ◽  
Kathy Ruddy

Patients suffering from body integrity dysphoria (BID) desire to become disabled, arising from a mismatch between the desired body and the physical body. We focus here on the most common variant, characterized by the desire for amputation of a healthy limb. In most reported cases, amputation of the rejected limb entirely alleviates the distress of the condition and engenders substantial improvement in quality of life. Since BID can lead to life-long suffering, it is essential to identify an effective form of treatment that causes the least amount of alteration to the person’s anatomical structure and functionality. Treatment methods involving medications, psychotherapy, and vestibular stimulation have proven largely ineffective. In this hypothesis article, we briefly discuss the characteristics, etiology, and current treatment options available for BID before highlighting the need for new, theory driven approaches. Drawing on recent findings relating to functional and structural brain correlates of BID, we introduce the idea of brain–computer interface (BCI)/neurofeedback approaches to target altered patterns of brain activity, promote re-ownership of the limb, and/or attenuate stress and negativity associated with the altered body representation.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas David Bowman ◽  
Eike Mark Rinke ◽  
Eun-Ju Lee ◽  
Robin Nabi ◽  
Claes de Vreese

A growing number of communication scholars have pushed for increased accountability and transparency in scholarship. While perspectives on open scholarship practices (OSPs) are noted in editorials and positions papers, we lack insights into how the larger community understands, feels about, engages with, and supports OSPs in practice. A mixed-methodological survey of International Communication Association members (N = 330) reported broad familiarity with and support for some OSPs, but less engagement with them. Respondents shared several concerns, including reservations about unclear standards, presumed incompatibility with some scholarly approaches, misuse of shared materials, and aggression from others. The reported findings inform debates around the current state and future directions of openness and transparency in the study of human communication.


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