Many years ago, Tianjin People's Hospital welcomed the first patient of the stroke neuro** robot project - 64-year-old retired teacher Aunt Shi. At that time, Aunt Shi, who was deeply troubled by stroke, had difficulty holding a pen. "My mother has stood on the podium all her life to teach and educate people, but now that she is retired, she can't even hold a pen, she can't accept it, and she is very depressed every day. Zhang Hao, an assistant researcher and postdoctoral fellow at Tianjin University, still remembers the words of Aunt Shi's children.
At the 2nd Postdoctoral Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition held in Yantai, Shandong Province not long ago, Zhang Hao participated in the unveiling track with the project of "Stroke Robot Based on EEG Collection, Processing and Analysis". Zhang Hao is the leader of the project, and the team he led is guided by the needs of clinical stroke to design and develop artificial neural robot systems. At present, the results have been clinically studied in a number of tertiary hospitals.
Raise your right hand, "move your fingers", "take a small step forward", ......In the ** Department of Tianjin People's Hospital, 63-year-old stroke patient Wang Baozhan (pseudonym) wears an EEG cap and tries to "control" his limbs with his mind, but is slightly sluggish.
Zhang Hao told a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Network: "The limb dysfunction caused by stroke seriously affects the quality of life of patients and causes a huge burden to individuals, families and society. In his opinion, in recent years, the neuro-robot system developed on the basis of motor imagination brain-computer interface can realize the direct interaction between the brain and musculoskeletal control equipment, induce the reorganization, repair and enhancement of neural network connections, and have positive significance for the reconstruction and improvement of motor function.
However, the complex problem of interactive information at the nervous system level faced by high-performance human-computer interaction makes it difficult for the existing neural robot system to efficiently decode neural information and accurately evaluate the process.
The stroke neurological robot developed by Zhang Hao's team uses brain-computer grafting to detect real-time signals sent by the brain through the EEG cap placed on the scalp, realizes the brain-machine-muscle synergistic interaction, and repeatedly trains to strengthen the excitatory conduction pathway from the brain to the muscle group, effectively promoting the remodeling of brain nerve function and helping patients recover motor function.
Zhang Lei, a core backbone member of the stroke neural robot project and a postdoctoral fellow at Tianjin University, said that compared with the traditional methods of single limb training such as acupuncture, massage, and physiotherapy, the stroke neurorobot can train the brain and limbs at the same time, helping neuroplasticity and greatly reducing the time. Based on this training model, Aunt Shi can write her name neatly after 5 months of training.
Zhang Hao introduced that there are still problems that need to be solved urgently in stroke neurological robots. For stroke patients, foreign countries are mainly based on invasive means, and domestic ones are mainly non-invasive, "no need for craniotomy, no need for invasive trauma surgery, just wear an EEG cap".
In Zhang's view, this also brings new problems: non-invasive methods, neuronal signaling needs to pass through brain tissue, cerebrospinal fluid, skull and scalp and other structures, and the quality is poor. How to improve the signal accuracy of scalp EEG to an invasive level is still being explored by his team. He and his team are passionate about entrepreneurship: "We hope to serve the country with what we have learned, benefit the people, and realize our academic ideals." ”
China Youth Daily and China Youth Network Xi reporter Han Yang reporter Li Guijie.
*: China Youth Daily.