Making brain-machine interfaces robust to future neural variability
This work addresses the need for more robust brain-machine interfaces for clinical translation, potentially reducing retraining downtime for daily use, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing decoder strategies with a novel method.
The researchers tackled the problem of brain-machine interface decoders becoming ineffective due to neural variability over time by developing a multiplicative recurrent neural network decoder trained on diverse data, which outperformed a state-of-the-art Kalman filter decoder in non-human primate tests under challenging conditions.
A major hurdle to clinical translation of brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) is that current decoders, which are trained from a small quantity of recent data, become ineffective when neural recording conditions subsequently change. We tested whether a decoder could be made more robust to future neural variability by training it to handle a variety of recording conditions sampled from months of previously collected data as well as synthetic training data perturbations. We developed a new multiplicative recurrent neural network BMI decoder that successfully learned a large variety of neural-to- kinematic mappings and became more robust with larger training datasets. When tested with a non-human primate preclinical BMI model, this decoder was robust under conditions that disabled a state-of-the-art Kalman filter based decoder. These results validate a new BMI strategy in which accumulated data history is effectively harnessed, and may facilitate reliable daily BMI use by reducing decoder retraining downtime.