BCI Applications in Medicine - Frontiers Research Topic

BCIs may increase the diagnostic accuracy of brain disorders (...) could be used to detect neural signatures of cognitive processes in persons diagnosed with disorders of consciousness (DOC), provide real-time functional brain mapping for neurosurgery, improve visual function assessment in glaucoma, etc.

Overall, different BCI approaches have the potential to enter into mainstream clinical practice, improving the assessment, rehabilitation, and management of several neurological diseases. 

This Research Topic aims to collect original research manuscripts and reviews describing breakthrough applications of invasive and non-invasive BCIs in all aspects of medicine.

Submit your abstract until 01 September 2017.

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Wired Minds: The Neural Underpinning of the Entrepreneurial Brain

Neural underpinnings of entrepreneurship are not well understood yet. Recent publications suggest that the behavior of psychopaths and entrepreneurs is not very different. This study aims to take an overall view of personality traits typically associated to an entrepreneur (determined by a psychometric assessment) and compare them to connectivity indices and cortical brain measurements. This is a proof-of-concept work towards bridging the gap between psycometry and brain underpinnings.

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FB dream: type 100 words/minute on a phone with just your mind

At April 19, after the FB presentation about it's secret team "Building 8" working in BCI, the media started publishing a lot of articles about the new FB/BCI revolution.

Facebook revealed it has a team of 60 engineers working on building a brain-computer interface that will let you type with just your mind without invasive implants. The team plans to use optical imaging to scan your brain a hundred times per second to detect you speaking silently in your head, and translate it into text. Regina Dugan, the head of Facebook’s R&D division Building 8, explained to conference attendees that the goal is to eventually allow people to type at 100 words per minute, 5X faster than typing on a phone, with just your mind.

This presentation was a mix of research and a pure marketing campaign. Of course the technology will grow up in the next years but there are a lot of "technical" barriers that will need time to type a message in your smartphone just using your thoughts. I belive this will be possible and it will be a total user-interface revolution. But, as the cancer cure aim, it needs years of work, doubt and research. 

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EEG-NIRS based Hybrid BCI and Monitoring

For the further development of the fields of telemedicine, neurotechnology and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), advances in hybrid multimodal signal acquisition and processing technology are invaluable. Currently, there are no commonly available hybrid devices combining bio-electrical and bio-optical neurophysiological measurements – here Electroencephalography (EEG) and functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). 

The resulting Mobile, Modular, Multimodal Biosignal Acquisitionarchitecture (M3BA) is based on a high-performance analog front-end optimized for bio-potential acquisition, a microcontroller, and our previously published open source openNIRS technology. The designed M3BA modules are very small configurable high precision and low-noise modules with full input linearity, Bluetooth, 3D accelerometer and low power consumption.

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BR41N.IO - The BCI Designers Hackathon

The BR41N.IO hackathon challenges young geeks to design and buid a unique, playful and wearable headpiece which is able to measure useful EEG signals in real-time to create any sort of interaction. With the intended purpose in mind, the teams plan and produce their own fully functional headpiece. 3D printers are on-site, so the teams will be able to give their headpieces an individual design that fits on participants’ head.

The goal of this hackathon is to bring people of different professions together, such as engineers, programmers, physicians, or graphic designers. As an interdisciplinary team, they learn from each other and merge well established hardware and software in order to create a new, innovative and exceptional idea. The participation only requires basic knowledge in Brain-Computer Interfaces, machine learning, programming, signal processing or designing.

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Sattelite Events @ 7th Graz BCI Conference 2017

Several side events will be taking place during the 7th Graz BCI Conference, September 18 – 22 :

• BCI Hackaton (organized by g.tec medical engineering GmbH)
• Workshop 1: Cloud-based BCIs: challenges of home-use systems for big data collection
• Workshop 2: EEG beyond the Usual & BCIs in Space
• Workshop 3: Passive BCI, Lab Streaming Layer, and Neuroadaptive Technology
• Chillout breakfast & BCI Science Slam
• xRmB Conference (organized by Guger Technologies OG)
• Tour to Styrian Vineyards

For more information about BCI/EEG press here.