Séminaire de Sliman Bensmaia
Friday 23 June, at 14:30 at Gastaut meeting room
Sliman Bensmaia
(University of Chicago Somatosensory Research Lab)
Invited by Guilhem Ibos
Biological and Bionic Hands: Natural Neural Coding and Artificial Perception
Abstract: handprosthetic limbs, and thus the huge state-space they can traverse, it is desirable to minimize the need of the patient to learn associations between events impinging upon the limb and arbitrary sensations. With this in mind, we seek to develop approaches to intuitively convey sensory information that is critical for object manipulation – information about contact location, pressure, and timing – through intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of primary somatosensory cortex (S1). To this end, we test in psychophysical experiments with monkeys, the sensations evoked by ICMS of S1. Based on these results, we show how to build a biomimetic encoding algorithm for conveying tactile feedback through a cortical interface and show that artificial touch improves the dexterity of brain-controlled bionic hands.