Cerebral basis for volitional movement and cortical neural prosthetics.

Our research is centered on two aspects of motor control: cerebral mechanisms of volitional arm movement and cortical control of neural prosthetics. We use electrode arrays to record action potentials from populations of individual neurons in motor cortical areas while monkeys perform tasks related to reaching and drawing and a variety of hand movements. A number of signal-processing and statistical analyses are performed on these data to extract movement-related information from the recorded activity. We are currently developing prostheses capable of restoring reaching, grasping and manipulation to immobilized individuals.

Sample Publications:

Schwartz AB. Useful Signals from Motor cortex. J. Physiology (2007) Mar 15;579 (Pt3):581-601.

Schwartz AB, Cui XT, Weber DJ and Moran DW. Brain controlled interfaces: Movement restoration with neural prosthetics. Neuron (2006) Oct 5; 52 (1): 205-20.

Brockwell AE, Kass RE and Schwartz AB. Statistical signal processing and the motor cortex. Proc. IEEE. (2007) 95:881-898.

van Hemmen JL and Schwartz AB. Population vector code: a geometric universal as actuator. Biol. Cybern. (2008) 98:509-518.

Velliste M, Perel S, Spalding MC, Whitford AS and Schwartz AB. Cortical control of a prosthetic arm for self-feeding. Nature (2008) 453:1098-1101.

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