Neuroprosthetics are devices which are mainly designed to improve or replace the function of the central nervous system. The most common and widely used famous neuroprosthetic is the cochlear implant. This bypasses the eardrum and stimulates the human auditory nerve directly. From this procedure, the people who lack the power of hearing are benefited. In fact, in 1957, the first cochlear implant was developed. Neuroprostheticsis also called as neural prosthetics. The Neuroprostheticsis can be described as a discipline which is directly related to neuroscience and biomedical engineering mainly used in developing neural prostheses. A series of devices like the motor, sensory or cognitive modality constitutes neural prostheses.
The neuroprosthetic are capable of acting as a bridge between the main functioning elements of the nervous system and nerves. Neuroprosthetic replaces the lost nerve function due to some diseases or injuries. In fact, Neuroprosthetic can also be used in the spinal cord in order to allow standing in paraplegics. It may be also used in restoring hand and upper limb movement in Tetraplegics. Another importance of a neuroprosthetic is that it also acts as a bridge between the nervous system and a physical prosthesis like in an upper limb replacement for amputees.
The main five principles proposed for the design of Neuroprosthetics are:
· The Motor information should be represented in a distributed manner
· In real time, you can extract multiple motor parameters
· Thus only a few hundred neurons need to be recorded
· Plasticity of the structure is the main advantageous principle that makes its design easy
· Same movement can be encoded from the different patterns available
The commonly used Neuroprosthetic device called the cochlear implants can function as a substitute for the stapes and ear drums. This device also stimulates the auditory nerves and analyses the frequency in the cochlea. To gather and process the sound, a microphone is fixed on an external unit. It would then transfer the processed signal to an implanted device. This rather would stimulate the auditory nerves through a microelectrode array. Neuroscientists have also implemented Neuroprosthetic as a tool in animal experiments to understand the working of brains. To make these applications possible, Neuroprosthetic need to be designed in a very small size and should be able to communicate wirelessly with the outside world.
Types of Neuroprosthetics
Now let us discuss the main three main types of neuroprosthetics. They are:
1. Sensory prosthetics
The most important type of neuroprosthetics is the sensory prosthetics. It receives the information into sensory areas like hearing and sight.
2. Motor prosthetics
The other type of neuroprosthetics is the motor prosthetics. This neuroprosthetics would help in regulating or stimulating the malfunctioning motor functions. In the motor neuroprosthetics, there is a pacemaker. When the natural cluster of the pacemaker cells encounters various problems, this pacemaker would stimulate the heart to beat. Motor neuroprosthetics can also be used generally for the conscious control of movement. These implants can be given to the totally paralyzed patients.
3. Cognitive prosthetics
The last type of neuroprosthetics is the cognitive prosthetics. This type is still on the drawing board field for the future prosthetics. It would be used to replace or improve problem areas in the brain itself.
Uses of neuroprosthetics
There are some important uses of neuroprosthetics which help you in understanding neuroprosthetics in a better way. They are listed as follows:
· Cochlear, retinal, optic nerve
· Nerve stimulation for foot drop
· Sacral nerve stimulation to prevent/control shitting
· Artificial genitourinary sphincter to control sexual activity
· Nerve stimulator for long term artificial respiration
· Pain control via spinal cord
· Chronic Deep brain stimulation
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