Restoration of Function

The Reliable Central-Nervous-System (CNS) Interfaces (RCI) effort seeks to demonstrate CNS interfaces that dramatically extend their performance and lifetime. RCI includes strategies for reliably recording motor-control information from a variety of sources, such as single-unit action potentials, local field potentials, electrocorticography (ECoG) and electroencephalography (EEG). This effort focuses on developing amputee-relevant behavioral-testing methods to accurately evaluate the reliability of CNS-interface systems prior to testing in the intended patient population.

The Reliable Peripheral Interfaces (RPI) effort seeks to demonstrate peripheral-nervous-system (PNS) interfaces that can reliably extract motor-control information for intuitive control of high-performance upper-limb prosthetics. This effort includes a variety of PNS-interface approaches such as nerve cuffs, penetrating electrode arrays, regenerative interfaces, tissue-engineered biological constructs, non-penetrating devices, invasive electromyography (EMG) and sensory-input (stimulation) systems.