Brain linguist: the era of brain science is coming

The heart is what it thinks In the small white building of the medical department of Tianjin University, the large screen on the wall shows "welcome to the medical department You are the fifth group of visitors this morning." The volunteers wearing electrode caps were silent, and the words on the wall were his voice This text can also be sent to recipients thousands of miles away Follow your heart Stick a few electrode pieces on the arm, recite "give a fist" in the heart, and the arm unconsciously makes a fist This technology has become a blessing for paralyzed patients At the beginning of the new year, a "black technology" exhibition was held quietly in the medical department of Tianjin University This kind of "black technology" captures the EEG information sent by human brain, and after interpretation and processing, it is transformed into a signal to control the machine This exhibition is the prototype exhibition of "bio machine intelligent interaction and bio Mechatronics robot technology", a key special project of "intelligent robot" under the national key research and development plan Five years ago, when his left leg was finally kicked out under the control of his mind, Zheng Guirong, a 77 year old stroke patient, was surprised to find that his leg had been paralyzed for eight months, and he even "listened to the call" again: "when his mind moved, his leg could start to lift." In the treatment room of Rehabilitation Department of Tianjin hospital, Wang Yang, a 47 year old patient, was given wrist rehabilitation training according to computer prompts after wearing brain computer interface equipment After more than three months of treatment, he has been able to rotate his wrist and bend his ankle "The brain is one of the most complex systems in the universe It not only has a very complex neural network structure, but also has a myriad of dynamic information," said Mingdong, leader of the research and development team of the first brain computer interface chip "brain linguist" and Dean of the medical engineering and transformation Medical Research Institute of Tianjin University Every word, there may be hundreds of millions of nerve cells in the brain sending out electrical impulses A high-speed computer is receiving and interpreting signals from the brain Medical rehabilitation using brain computer interface technology is changing people's lives " In 2014, Tianjin University successfully developed the first artificial neural robot system - "shengong-1", which is suitable for stroke rehabilitation of all limbs The system integrates the brain computer interface technology of sports imagination and physical training rehabilitation therapy In addition, the system bionically constructs an artificial neural path in the body of stroke patients, through the simulated decoding of the patients' sports rehabilitation idea information, and then drives the multi-level neuromuscular electrical stimulation technology to generate corresponding actions With the success of research and development of "Shengong No.2" and "Shengong No.3", at present, "Shengong" has carried out clinical trials in Tianjin and Shandong duodi top three hospitals, bringing thousands of patients with new treatment methods Exchange of ideas in 2016, during the manned flights of tiangong-2 and shenzhou-11, two astronauts completed a rather sci-fi forward-looking experiment: the first space brain computer interaction in human history, which realized silent communication This experimental system was developed by the Mingdong team in cooperation with the China astronaut center This is the first in orbit space adaptability test of brain computer interaction technology in the world Through a large number of ground-based experiments, the system deeply reveals the effects of weightlessness, noise, emotion, etc on the brain movie, and realizes the brain computer interface adaptive classification technology with high recognition degree, high stability and suitable for the space environment; establishes the experimental strategies and training methods for the aerospace characteristics, greatly improves the recognition accuracy of the system, and establishes a stable baseline for effectively carrying out the comparison between the heaven and the earth Human computer integration will be the inevitable trend of the development of aerospace medicine and human factors engineering in the future Brain computer interface provides the astronauts and other special groups with the "third hand" in the environment of physical constraints and the adaptive automatic human-computer cooperation of neural function level integration to help them complete more and more complex tasks The establishment and successful test of the system will play an important role in promoting the research and application of advanced interactive technology in the future, and provide the key scientific basis and technical support for the new generation of medical and human factors support system of China's manned space engineering "The equipment in the sky should not only take into account the load limitation, but also complete the tasks of three main paradigms: active, passive and reactive in space The system requires small weight, high performance and more intensive," Mingdong said It is considered that the brain computer codec integrated chip with more powerful functions is the research direction Countries all over the world have increased the research on brain computer interface technology From military aerospace to life entertainment, brain computer interface technology has a broad application prospect The era of brain science is coming Putting the future in one's own hands brain computer interface has been listed as one of the most priority disruptive innovation technologies supported by the United States and one of the 14 Export Control Technologies of the United States Department of Commerce "At present, in the research of brain computer interface technology in China, we also rely on imported EEG front-end chips and high-performance processors in the two core links of EEG acquisition and data processing." "Limited by EEG acquisition mode and computing equipment, the current brain computer interface technology still faces great challenges in terms of decoding reliability and ease of use," Mingdong said It is urgent to develop a self controlled brain computer interface chip " In May 2019, the world's first brain computer interface chip "brain speaker" was officially released at the third world intelligence conference Brain linguist, jointly developed by Tianjin University and China electronic information industry group, has completely independent intellectual property rights "Decipher code, high command, fast communication and strong interaction are the four advantages of brain linguists." According to Mingdong, "the chip can identify the extremely weak neural information in the scalp electroencephalogram, efficiently calculate and decode the user's operation instructions, greatly improve the communication efficiency between the brain and the machine, expand the functions to fully meet the daily communication needs, and make the brain computer interaction equipment truly become the" third hand "of the user." "In the future, brain speaker is expected to open up a way for brain computer interaction technology to be civil, portable, wearable and easy to use This will allow the patient to complete rehabilitation treatment in the community and at home " "The researchers have made some reflections and attempts on the issue of civilian use of the chip," Mingdong said Cheng longlong, a data scientist of China Electronics and information industry group and general manager of CEC cloud brain Technology Co., Ltd., also said that the "brain linguist" chips are expected to realize the independent control of the key technology of brain computer interface in China and lead the research of brain science and brain like intelligence to overtake In the future, the chip series will continue to "evolve" to provide technical support for the development of new generation brain computer intelligence