Publications related to Towards Independence: A BCI Telepresence Robot for People with Severe Motor Disabilities

Non-invasive stimulation of the human striatum disrupts reinforcement learning of motor skills

Elena Beanato, Esra Neufeld, Friedhelm Christoph Hummel, Takuya Morishita, Maximilian Jonas Wessel, Traian Popa, Pierre Theopistos Vassiliadis, Julie Duqué, Fabienne Windel

Reinforcement feedback can improve motor learning, but the underlying brain mechanisms remain underexplored. In particular, the causal contribution of specific patterns of oscillatory activity within the human striatum is unknown. To address this question, ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Customizing the human-avatar mapping based on EEG error related potentials during avatar-based interaction

Ronan Boulic, Ricardo Andres Chavarriaga Lozano, Bruno Herbelin, José del Rocio Millán Ruiz, Olaf Blanke, Fumiaki Iwane, Thibault Serge Mario Porssut

Objective. A key challenge of virtual reality (VR) applications is to maintain a reliable human-avatar mapping. Users may lose the sense of controlling (sense of agency), owning (sense of body ownership), or being located (sense of self-location) inside th ...

2024

Text-to-Microstructure Generation Using Generative Deep Learning

Jamie Paik

Designing novel materials is greatly dependent on understanding the design principles, physical mechanisms, and modeling methods of material microstructures, requiring experienced designers with expertise and several rounds of trial and error. Although rec ...

Wiley-V C H Verlag Gmbh2024

Unraveling behavior and cortical signals to guide the development of soft neuroprostheses for auditory restoration and spreading depolarization

Emilie Cornelia Maria Revol

Neuroprostheses have been used clinically for decades, to help restore or preserve brain functions, when pharmaceutical treatments are inefficient. Although great progress in the field has been made over the years to interface with the nervous system, surf ...

EPFL2024

Investigating neural resource allocation in the sensorimotor control of extra limbs

Giulia Dominijanni

The rise of robotic body augmentation brings forth new developments that will transform robotics, human-machine interaction, and wearable electronics. Extra robotic limbs, although building upon restorative technologies, bring their own set of challenges i ...

EPFL2024

Integrated Wireless Power, Data Communication, and Thermal Sensing System for Autonomous Multisite Brain Implants

Implanted medical devices (IMDs) have been widely developed to support the monitoring and recording of biological data inside the body or brain. Wirelessly powered IMDs, a subset of implantable electronics, have been proposed to eliminate the limitations r ...

EPFL2024

Driving and suppressing the human language network using large language models

Martin Schrimpf

Transformer models such as GPT generate human-like language and are predictive of human brain responses to language. Here, using functional-MRI-measured brain responses to 1,000 diverse sentences, we first show that a GPT-based encoding model can predict t ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Human-machine interface for two-dimensional steering control with the auricular muscles

Solaiman Shokur, Silvestro Micera, Daniel Jose Lins Leal Pinheiro

Human-machine interfaces (HMIs) can be used to decode a user's motor intention to control an external device. People that suffer from motor disabilities, such as spinal cord injury, can benefit from the uses of these interfaces. While many solutions can be ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2023

Combination of Neurotechnologies Towards Personalized Neurorehabilitation for Stroke Patients

Claudia Bigoni

"Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages" is the third sustainable development goal for the United Nations Agenda of 2030. This doctoral thesis fully embodied this objective by targeting stroke, a leading cause of death and disabili ...

EPFL2023

How I became myself after merging with a computer: Does human-machine symbiosis raise human rights issues?

Marcello Ienca

Novel usages of brain stimulation combined with artificially intelligent (AI) systems promise to address a large range of diseases. These new conjoined technologies, such as brain-computer interfaces (BCI), are increasingly used in experimental and clinica ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC2023

A mirror therapy system using virtual reality and an actuated exoskeleton for the recovery of hand motor impairments: a study of acceptability, usability, and embodiment

Luca Randazzo, Antonio Paolillo

Hand motor impairments are one of the main causes of disabilities worldwide. Rehabilitation procedures like mirror therapy are given crucial importance. In the traditional setup, the patient moves the healthy hand in front of a mirror; the view of the mirr ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Brain connectome correlates of short-term motor learning in healthy older subjects

Manon Chloé Durand-Ruel, Friedhelm Christoph Hummel, Takuya Morishita, Maeva Moyne, Chang-Hyun Park

The motor learning process entails plastic changes in the brain, especially in brain network reconfigurations. In the current study, we sought to characterize motor learning by determining changes in the coupling behaviour between the brain functional and ...

Elsevier Masson, Corp Off2023

Prediction of post-stroke motor recovery benefits from measures of sub-acute widespread network damages

Dimitri Nestor Alice Van De Ville, Elvira Pirondini, Maria Giulia Preti, Cyprien Alban Félicien Rivier

Rivier et al. report that global measures of brain connectivity estimated by introducing virtual lesions in healthy structural connectomes significantly increase the accuracy of motor recovery prediction in stroke patients when added to focal and clinical ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS2023

Noninvasive theta-burst stimulation of the human striatum enhances striatal activity and motor skill learning

Elena Beanato, Pablo Maceira Elvira, Esra Neufeld, Friedhelm Christoph Hummel, Takuya Morishita, Maximilian Jonas Wessel, Chang-Hyun Park, Traian Popa, Pierre Theopistos Vassiliadis, Pauline Menoud, Fabienne Windel

The stimulation of deep brain structures has thus far only been possible with invasive methods. Transcranial electrical temporal interference stimulation (tTIS) is a novel, noninvasive technology that might overcome this limitation. The initial proof-of-co ...

Nature Portfolio2023

lifex-ep: a robust and efficient software for cardiac electrophysiology simulations

Alfio Quarteroni, Francesco Regazzoni, Marco Fedele, Stefano Pagani

Background: Simulating the cardiac function requires the numerical solution of multi-physics and multi-scale mathematical models. This underscores the need for streamlined, accurate, and high-performance computational tools. Despite the dedicated endeavors ...

BMC2023

Early motor skill acquisition in healthy older adults: brain correlates of the learning process

Manon Chloé Durand-Ruel, Pablo Maceira Elvira, Friedhelm Christoph Hummel, Takuya Morishita, Maeva Moyne, Chang-Hyun Park

Motor skill learning is a crucial process at all ages. However, healthy aging is often accompanied by a reduction in motor learning capabilities. This study characterized the brain dynamics of healthy older adults during motor skill acquisition and identif ...

OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC2023

Noninvasive deep brain stimulation to modulate human behavior by means of transcranial temporal interference electrical stimulation

Elena Beanato

All functions we use in our everyday life depend on a complex interplay between both cortical and subcortical brain areas, communicating in between each others. When a region is affected by either an accident, aging or neurodegenerative diseases, the whole ...

EPFL2023

Adapting Haptic Feedback for Guided Meditation

Nicolas Henchoz, Cédric Duchene, Andreas Sonderegger, Romain Simon Collaud, Emily Clare Groves, Yoann Pierre Douillet

Technology supporting meditation is a multimillion-dollar market that continues to grow. There is also strong academic interest to understand and improve the impact technology can have for the user experience of practitioners. However, little work investig ...

2023

Mechanisms underlying reinforcement learning of motor skills

Pierre Theopistos Vassiliadis

Motor learning allows animals, including human beings, to acquire skills that are es-sential for efficient interactions with the environment. This ability to learn new motor skills is of great practical relevance for daily-life activities (such as when lea ...

EPFL2023

Device and system as human interactive surface

Jamie Paik, Fabio Zuliani

A force-feedback surface that creates and modulates distinctive profile and stiffnessto interact with a user in contact thereto, the surface being functionally independentto be used as a single module but can be customized to extend the application indiver ...

2023