A 91̽�� Video production, “,” won a 2023 Northwest Emmy Award this month in the Children/Youth/Teens category. “Brainworks” is a series that educates children about neuroscience.

The episode was executive produced by , research associate professor of bioengineering and executive director of the UW , and Cara Podenski, managing executive producer for  91̽��Video. Podenski also wrote and directed. Dave Ris served as an editor.

“Vision and the Brain,” hosted by Chudler, guides viewers through the visual system and shows how eyes, vision and the brain are related. It also covers eye care and anatomy, color vision, vision tests and more. The episode features Dr. , assistant professor of ophthalmology at the 91̽��and , professor of computer science and engineering at the 91̽��and co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology.

The episode was funded by the Dana Foundation, the Disabilities, Opportunities, Internetworking and Technology (DO-IT) program and 91̽��Video.

“Brainworks” won a Northwest Emmy Award in 2017 in the Science and Health – Program/Special category. The awards honor excellence in broadcast journalism in Washington state, Alaska, Idaho, Montana and Oregon.

Watch the award-winning video below:

Three new faculty books from the 91̽�� cover topics ranging from children’s use of technology to the life experiences of Black women to neuroscience and brain research. 91̽��News talked with the authors to learn more.

Guiding healthy interactions between children and technology

Technology plays a fundamental role in nearly every aspect of our lives, but finding ways to guide healthy usage of technology among young minds remains a tumultuous process.

In “,” , associate professor in the 91̽��Information School, explains how technology affects children in the various stages of their childhood. Published in March by MIT Press, the book provides parents and teachers with ideas to help kids navigate the digital world in a healthy way.

“I’ve been researching technology’s role in child development for almost 20 years now, and throughout that time I have repeatedly gotten questions like, ‘Is technology good or bad for my kid?’” Davis said. “So I really wanted to take this complicated landscape of research that has accumulated over the last couple of decades and make sense of it in a way that could offer something concrete for parents, teachers and policymakers, and even for technology designers and researchers.

“The goal here is to offer a concrete framework for making sense of what we know about the interaction between technology design and child development that will guide good decisions on these different levels.”

Using her experiences as a researcher, parent, teacher and older sister, Davis highlights the difficulties in identifying a clear approach to dealing with technology and children.

“We have accumulated quite a bit of research over the last couple of decades. It doesn’t point to one clear answer,” Davis said. “That’s partly because technologies are different. But also children are very different, and their circumstances are very different. A one-size-fits-all approach really doesn’t work when we’re talking about kids and technology.”

In the book, Davis introduces the idea of the “good enough digital parent,” updating the mid-twentieth century theory of the “good enough mother” to fit the modern world.

“The good enough digital parent is trying to do their best,” Davis said. “They’re trying to steer their children towards self-directed, community supported digital experiences, but with the recognition that they’re not going to be perfect all the time. It’s the idea that, with your child, you’re both developing and figuring this out together, making mistakes and adjusting along the way, and then also importantly recognizing that these are challenging things to deal with.”

Davis concludes that some of the onus must be taken off the family unit and placed back on industry and government regulation. It’s important, she said, to think of ways in which the different levels of society can pitch in and help solve these challenges.

For more information, contact Davis at kdavis78@uw.edu.

Emotion, creativity and knowledge intertwine in ‘Feelin’

Early in her new book exploring the art, emotion and life experiences of Black women, makes clear the title, “Feelin,” is intentional, to be written, uttered and understood exactly as is.

“I’m grounding it in the cultural space of African American language and knowledge production. The context in which the word feelin would be used — I’m feelin that, I’m not feelin that, you feel me — that marks knowledge, a kind of complete understanding of something,” says Judd, an associate professor of gender, women and sexuality studies. “I consider the word whole in its own right, and to use an apostrophe would mark where something is missing. To take seriously the cultural meanings of the term, the language from which it comes from, I’m no longer using the standard English reference. I’m using the cultural term.”

Published by Northwestern University Press, “” is a book that, like the very meaning of the title, Judd wants the reader to experience. Each chapter delves into an issue, idea or perspective through the lens of creative works.

A chapter on song as ecstatic practice delves into the music of a series of vocalists and in particular, of Aretha Franklin and Avery*Sunshine. Another chapter confronts the stereotype of the angry Black woman, and the emotion of anger, through Nina Simone’s song “Mississippi Goddam” (and the backlash she faced for it), and Judd’s own poetry and haunting video reflecting on Sandra Bland, who died in police custody after a 2015 traffic stop in Texas.

That video is just one of many works Judd invites the reader to view, listen to or read by scanning QR codes scattered throughout the book. But they’re not meant to be supplementary, like the CD-ROMS that used to be tucked inside covers, Judd says. “I think of it as a part of the experience of the book. It’s not bonus material. It IS the material.”

Judd sees “Feelin” as a coalescing of ideas over time.

“It was understanding the depth of how these Black women artists, writers and musicians were calling on people to detach themselves from this idea that valuable knowledge is non-emotional and exists only in the realm of what one set of people thinks is rational, and that desire to remove us from knowledge that is felt is another way of discounting our stories, another way of discounting our experience,” Judd said.

And the cover art? Judd’s own, a mixed media piece called “Following the Bright Back of the Woman.”

For more information, contact Judd at bjudd@uw.edu.

Look inside your brain with ‘Neuropedia’

Neuroscience and brain research is a vast and deeply complicated field. A new book by , research associate professor in the 91̽��Department of Bioengineering and executive director of the 91̽��, is written specifically to take a public audience inside the fascinating world of the brain.

—published by Princeton University Press as part of their Pedia series and illustrated by Chudler’s daughter, Kelly Chudler — explores the mysteries of the brain and offers a peek behind the curtain of what really goes on inside our heads.

“This kind of book is more for the general public. It’s not supposed to be a textbook,” Chudler said. “It’s one of the many ways that I can communicate neuroscience and brain research to the public.”

Chudler hopes the book will help audiences develop a deeper appreciation for the intricacies of the brain and the field of neuroscience.

“There are many misconceptions, what we call neuro-myths, about the brain,” Chudler said. “So, I’d like people to get a basic understanding of the structure and function of the nervous system and some of the controversies involved. I hope that people will be able to appreciate and even empathize with people who are affected by diseases of the nervous system.”

Neurological and psychiatric diseases are a part of human life, and Chudler wants to help combat some of the negative beliefs associated with these diseases.

“I hope that people can better understand what’s going on with friends and family,” Chudler said, “and maybe even reduce stigma attached to neurological and mental disorders and perhaps even help people affected by these conditions.”

Written like an encyclopedia of all things neurological, the book functions like an extended glossary with entries from A-Z.

“People don’t have to read it from cover to cover. They can just flip through and read the short three or four paragraphs for each entry,” Chudler said. “Because each entry is short, you can’t get into too much depth. I hope people will read a particular entry and want to learn more and do some of their own research, because an entire book can be written about each entry.”

The book also includes references, illustrations and resources for those who want to learn more about various topics like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and even the neurological effects of COVID.

“They’ll be provided with a basic understanding of how the nervous system works, some of the limitations of our understanding of the brain, the current state of research and maybe learn some facts or figures for the next time they’re on Jeopardy or at a trivia night,” Chudler said.

For more information, contact Chudler at chudler@uw.edu.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people who recognize the connections they share with others are more likely to wear a mask, follow health guidelines and help people, even at a potential cost to themselves, a new 91̽�� study shows.

Indeed, an identification with all humanity, as opposed to identification with a geographic area like a country or town, predicts whether someone will engage in “prosocial” behaviors particular to the pandemic, such as donating their own masks to a hospital or coming to the aid of a sick person.

The , published March 10 in PLOS ONE, is drawn from about 2,500 responses, from more than 80 countries, to an online, international study launched last April.

Researchers say the findings could have implications for public health messaging during the pandemic: Appealing to individuals’ deep sense of connectedness to others could, for example, encourage some people to get vaccinated, wear masks or follow other public health guidelines.

“We want to understand to what extent people feel connected with and identify with all humanity, and how that can be used to explain the individual differences in how people respond during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said author , a postdoctoral researcher at the 91̽��Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, who co-led the study with postdoctoral researcher at the Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering.

In psychology, “identification with all humanity” is a belief that can be measured and utilized in predicting behavior or informing policy or decision-making. Last spring, as governments around the world were imposing pandemic restrictions, a multidisciplinary team of 91̽��researchers came together to study the implications of how people would respond to pandemic-related ethical dilemmas, and how those responses might be associated with various psychological beliefs.

Researchers designed an online study, providing different scenarios based in social psychology and game theory, for participants to consider. The team then made the study available in English and five other languages on the virtual lab , which co-author , an associate professor in the Allen School, created for conducting behavioral studies with people around the world.

The scenarios presented participants with situations that could arise during the pandemic and asked people to what extent they would:

• Follow the list of World Health Organization health guidelines (which mostly focused on social distancing and hygiene when the study was run between mid-April to mid-June)
• Donate masks of their family’s to a hospital short on masks
• Drive a person exhibiting obvious symptoms of COVID-19 to the hospital
• Go to a grocery store to buy food for a neighboring family
• Call an ambulance and wait with a sick person for it to arrive

In addition to demographic details and information about their local pandemic restrictions, such as stay-at-home orders, participants were asked questions to get at the psychology behind their responses: about their own felt identification with their local community, their nation and humanity, in general. For instance, participants were asked, “How much would you say you care (feel upset, want to help) when bad things happen to people all over the world?”

Researchers found that an identification with “all humanity” significantly predicted answers to the five scenarios, well above identifying with country or community, and after controlling for other variables such as gender, age or education level. Its effect was stronger than any other factor, said Barragan, and popped out as a highly significant predictor of people’s tendency to want to help others.

The authors noted that identifying with one’s country, in fact, came in a distant third, behind identification with humanity in general and one’s local community. Strong feelings toward one’s nation, nationalism, can lead to behavior and policies that favor some groups of people over others.

“There is variability in how people respond to the social aspects of the pandemic. Our research reveals that a crucial aspect of one’s world view – how much people feel connected to others they have never met – predicts people’s cooperation with public health measures and the altruism they feel toward others during the pandemic,” said co-author , who is co-director of I-LABS and holds the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Endowed Chair in psychology.

Since last spring, of course, much has changed. More than 2.5 million people worldwide have died of COVID-19, vaccines are being administered, and guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, especially regarding masks, has evolved. If a new survey was launched today, Barragan said, the research group would like to include scenarios tuned to the current demands of the pandemic and the way it challenges us to care for others even while we maintain physical distancing.

While surveys, in general, can be prone to what’s known as self-serving bias — the participant answers in ways that they believe will make them “look good” — researchers say that’s not evident here. They point to the sizeable differences between responses that identify with all humanity, and those that identify with community or country, and note there would be little reason for participants to deliberately emphasize one and not the others.

The project is part of a larger multidisciplinary effort by this same 91̽��research team to bring together computer scientists and psychologists interested in decision-making in different cultural contexts, which could inform our understanding of human and machine learning.

An eventual aim of the study is to use tools from artificial intelligence research and online interactions with humans around the world to understand how one’s culture influences social and moral decision-making.

“This project is a wonderful example of how the tools of computer science can be combined with psychological science to understand human moral behaviors, revealing new information for the public good,” said co-author , the Hwang Endowed Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the UW.

For COVID-19 and future humanitarian crises, the ethical dilemmas presented in the study can offer insight into what propels people to help, which can, in turn, inform policy and outreach.

“While it is true that many people don’t seem to be exhibiting helpful behaviors during this pandemic, what our study shows is that there are specific characteristics that predict who is especially likely to engage in such behavior,” Barragan said. “Future work could help people to feel a stronger connection to others, and this could promote more helpful behavior during pandemics.”

Additional co-authors were Koosha Khalvati, a doctoral student in the Allen School and Rechele Brooks, a research scientist with I-LABS.

The study was funded by the UW, the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Barragan at barragan@uw.edu or Meltzoff at meltzoff@uw.edu.

Note: This video was created in January 2020

Almost 18,000 Americans every year. Many of these people are unable to use their hands and arms and can’t do everyday tasks such as eating, grooming or drinking water without help.

Using physical therapy combined with a noninvasive method of stimulating nerve cells in the spinal cord, 91̽�� researchers helped six Seattle area participants regain some hand and arm mobility. That increased mobility lasted at least three to six months after treatment had ended. The research team Jan. 5 in the journal IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering.

“We use our hands for everything — eating, brushing our teeth, buttoning a shirt. Spinal cord injury patients rate regaining hand function as the absolute first priority for treatment. It is five to six times more important than anything else that they ask for help on,” said lead author , a 91̽��senior postdoctoral researcher in electrical and computer engineering who completed this research as a doctoral student of rehabilitation medicine in the 91̽��School of Medicine.

“At the beginning of our study,” Inanici said, “I didn’t expect such an immediate response starting from the very first stimulation session. As a rehabilitation physician, my experience was that there was always a limit to how much people would recover. But now it looks like that’s changing. It’s so rewarding to see these results.”

After a spinal cord injury, many patients do physical therapy to help them attempt to regain mobility. Recently, have shown that implanting a stimulator to deliver electric current to a damaged spinal cord could help paralyzed patients walk again.

The 91̽��team, composed of researchers from the , combined stimulation with standard physical therapy exercises, but the stimulation doesn’t require surgery. Instead, it involves small patches that stick to a participant’s skin like a Band-Aid. These patches are placed around the injured area on the back of the neck where they deliver electrical pulses.

The researchers recruited six people with chronic spinal cord injuries. All participants had been injured for at least a year and a half. Some participants couldn’t wiggle their fingers or thumbs while others had some mobility at the beginning of the study.

To explore the viability of using the skin-surface stimulation method, the researchers designed a five-month training program. For the first month, the researchers monitored participants’ baseline limb movements each week. Then for the second month, the team put participants through intensive physical therapy training, three times a week for two hours at a time. For the third month, participants continued physical therapy training but with stimulation added.

“We turned on the device, but they continued doing the exact same exercises they did the previous month, progressing to slightly more difficult versions if they improved,” Inanici said.

For the last two months of the study, participants were divided into two categories: Participants with less severe injuries received another month of training alone and then a month of training plus stimulation. Patients with more severe injuries received the opposite — training and stimulation first, followed by only training second.

While some participants regained some hand function during training alone, all six saw improvements when stimulation was combined with training.

“Both people who had no hand movement at the beginning of the study started moving their hands again during stimulation, and were able to produce a measurable force between their fingers and thumb,” said senior author , a 91̽��associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, rehabilitation medicine and physiology and biophysics. “That’s a dramatic change, to go from being completely paralyzed below the wrists down to moving your hands at will.”

In addition, some participants noticed other improvements, including a more normal heart rate and better regulation of body temperature and bladder function.

The team followed up with participants for up to six months after training and found that these improvements remained, despite no more stimulation.

“We think these stimulators bring the nerves that make your muscles contract very close to being active. They don’t actually cause the muscle to move, but they get it ready to move. It’s primed, like the sprinter at the start of a race,” said Moritz, who is also the co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology. “Then when someone with a spinal cord injury wants to move, the few connections that might have been spared around the injury are enough to cause those muscles to contract.”

The research is moving toward helping people in the clinic. The results of this study have already informed the design of that will be co-led by Moritz. One of the lead sites will be at the UW.

“We’re seeing a common theme across universities — stimulating the spinal cord electrically is making people better,” said Moritz, who also holds the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang professorship in electrical and computer engineering. “But it does take motivation. The stimulator helps you do the exercises, and the exercises help you get stronger, but the improvements are incremental. Over time, however, they add up into something that’s really astounding.”

, a research scientist at the UW; , a 91̽��doctoral student in rehabilitation medicine; and , an associate professor of neurological surgery in the 91̽��School of Medicine, are co-authors on this paper. This research was funded by the Center for Neurotechnology, the Washington State Spinal Cord Injury Consortium and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.

For more information, contact Inanici at finanici@uw.edu and Moritz at ctmoritz@uw.edu.

Grant number: EEC-1028725

Meanwhile, you’ve read news stories highlighting the urgent PPE needs of your local hospital.

Do you donate some of your masks to the hospital? All of them? None?

Such is a moral dilemma under COVID-19, and one posed by a new international study led by the 91̽��. The five- to seven-minute, anonymous is designed to gauge the perception of ethical situations as the pandemic evolves around the world. Respondents take the survey, add basic demographic details, as well as information about current restrictions in place in their community, and learn at the end how their answers compare to others.

“People are making important decisions, big and small, in this time of COVID-19. Many find themselves facing moral dilemmas about ‘what’s the right thing to do’ in this situation,” said , a 91̽��psychology professor and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences. “This helps us learn about similarities and differences in the opinions and feelings among people as we all cope with this unique event.”

There are no right or wrong answers, researchers say, because the way each person responds may reflect the norms of where they live.

Ultimately, the research aims to help inform the ways artificial intelligence can become more attuned to cultural variations in how people think about decisions in health care settings, said , a professor in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and a co-director of the ,

“There is an urgent need to answer this question given the growing use of AI in medical contexts,” Rao said. Human moral values likely vary from one culture to another, so “AI systems need to ‘learn’ culture-specific moral values by interacting with humans, similar to how children learn their moral values.”

The scenarios in the survey are based on classic dilemmas posed in ethics, social psychology and game theory, Rao said. In two situations, the respondent is asked to imagine themselves as a doctor and to make a potentially life-altering choice. In other scenarios, the respondent is a passer-by or a neighbor presented with a not-so-simple opportunity to help.

The survey is available on the virtual lab , which , an associate professor in the Allen School and co-leader of the study with Meltzoff and Rao, created for conducting behavioral studies with people around the world. So far the moral dilemmas survey has been translated into five languages, including Spanish, German and Farsi (with more to come), and participants have come from about 70 countries. Researchers expect trends in responses to reflect geography and culture, Reinecke said.

Researchers expect some differences among age groups, as well: The survey is aimed at people across a wide range of ages. LabintheWild doesn’t usually exclude anyone, Reinecke added, but the difficult nature of the pandemic, and the scenarios presented in the survey, prompted researchers to design it to be of interest to participants from 14 years of age to adults well past retirement. The researchers wanted to design the questions to be interesting to a broad set of participants, because the pandemic affects everyone in society.

“We hope to look at responses according to the country of the participant and their age in order to learn how people are thinking about this once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Reinecke. “This will help us be better prepared if this comes around again. And one feature of the work that people find fun is that we have a chart at the end where people can compare their answers to those given by others around the world. Most people find this fascinating and informative.”

The study is funded by the UW, the Templeton World Charity Foundation and the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Reinecke at reinecke@cs.washington.edu, Rao at rao@cs.washington.edu or Meltzoff at meltzoff@uw.edu.

The choices we make in large group settings — such as in online forums and social media — might seem fairly automatic to us. But our decision-making process is more complicated than we know. So, researchers have been working to understand what’s behind that seemingly intuitive process.

Now, new 91̽�� research has discovered that in large groups of essentially anonymous members, people make choices based on a model of the “mind of the group” and an evolving simulation of how a choice will affect that theorized mind.

Using a mathematical framework with roots in artificial intelligence and robotics, 91̽��researchers were able to uncover the process for how a person makes choices in groups. And, they also found they were able to predict a person’s choice more often than more traditional descriptive methods. The Wednesday, Nov. 27, in Science Advances.

“Our results are particularly interesting in light of the increasing role of social media in dictating how humans behave as members of particular groups,” said senior author , the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang professor in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology.

“We can almost get a glimpse into a human mind and analyze its underlying computational mechanism for making collective decisions.”

“In online forums and social media groups, the combined actions of anonymous group members can influence your next action, and conversely, your own action can change the future behavior of the entire group,” Rao said.

The researchers wanted to find out what mechanisms are at play in settings like these.

In the paper, they explain that human behavior relies on predictions of future states of the environment — a best guess at what might happen — and the degree of uncertainty about that environment increases “drastically” in social settings. To predict what might happen when another human is involved, a person makes a model of the other’s mind, called a , and then uses that model to simulate how one’s own actions will affect that other “mind.”

While this act functions well for one-on-one interactions, the ability to model individual minds in a large group is much harder. The new research suggests that humans create an average model of a “mind” representative of the group even when the identities of the others are not known.

To investigate the complexities that arise in group decision-making, the researchers focused on the “volunteer’s dilemma task,” wherein a few individuals endure some costs to benefit the whole group. Examples of the task include guarding duty, blood donation and stepping forward to stop an act of violence in a public place, they explain in the paper.

To mimic this situation and study both behavioral and brain responses, the researchers put subjects in an MRI, one by one, and had them play a game. In the game, called a , the subject’s contribution to a communal pot of money influences others and determines what everyone in the group gets back. A subject can decide to contribute a dollar or decide to “free-ride” — that is, not contribute to get the reward in the hopes that others will contribute to the pot.

If the total contributions exceed a predetermined amount, everyone gets two dollars back. The subjects played dozens of rounds with others they never met. Unbeknownst to the subject, the others were actually simulated by a computer mimicking previous human players.

“We can almost get a glimpse into a human mind and analyze its underlying computational mechanism for making collective decisions,” said lead author , a doctoral student in the Allen School. “When interacting with a large number of people, we found that humans try to predict future group interactions based on a model of an average group member’s intention. Importantly, they also know that their own actions can influence the group. For example, they are aware that even though they are anonymous to others, their selfish behavior would decrease collaboration in the group in future interactions and possibly bring undesired outcomes.”

In their study, the researchers were able to assign mathematical variables to these actions and create their own computer models for predicting what decisions the person might make during play. They found that their model predicts human behavior significantly better than reinforcement learning models — that is, when a player learns to contribute based on how the previous round did or didn’t pay out regardless of other players — and more traditional descriptive approaches.

Given that the model provides a quantitative explanation for human behavior, Rao wondered if it may be useful when building machines that interact with humans.

“In scenarios where a machine or software is interacting with large groups of people, our results may hold some lessons for AI,” he said. “A machine that simulates the ‘mind of a group’ and simulates how its actions affect the group may lead to a more human-friendly AI whose behavior is better aligned with the values of humans.”

Co-authors include Seongmin A. Park, Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis and Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod, France; Saghar Mirbagheri, Department of Psychology, New York University; Remi Philippe, Mariateresa Sestito and Jean-Claude Dreher at the Institut des Sciences Cognitives Marc Jeannerod. This research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Science Foundation, and the Templeton World Charity Foundation.

For more information, contact Rao at rao@cs.washington.edu.

Telepathic communication might be one step closer to reality thanks to new research from the 91̽��. A team created a method that allows three people to work together to solve a problem using only their minds.

In BrainNet, three people play a Tetris-like game using a brain-to-brain interface. This is the first demonstration of two things: a brain-to-brain network of more than two people, and a person being able to both receive and send information to others using only their brain. The team April 16 in the Nature journal , though this research previously attracted media attention after the researchers September to the preprint site .

“Humans are social beings who communicate with each other to cooperate and solve problems that none of us can solve on our own,” said corresponding author , the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang professor in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and a co-director of the . “We wanted to know if a group of people could collaborate using only their brains. That’s how we came up with the idea of BrainNet: where two people help a third person solve a task.”

As in Tetris, the game shows a block at the top of the screen and a line that needs to be completed at the bottom. Two people, the Senders, can see both the block and the line but can’t control the game. The third person, the Receiver, can see only the block but can tell the game whether to rotate the block to successfully complete the line. Each Sender decides whether the block needs to be rotated and then passes that information from their brain, through the internet and to the brain of the Receiver. Then the Receiver processes that information and sends a command — to rotate or not rotate the block — to the game directly from their brain, hopefully completing and clearing the line.

The team asked five groups of participants to play 16 rounds of the game. For each group, all three participants were in different rooms and couldn’t see, hear or speak to one another.

The Senders each could see the game displayed on a computer screen. The screen also showed the word “Yes” on one side and the word “No” on the other side. Beneath the “Yes” option, an LED flashed 17 times per second. Beneath the “No” option, an LED flashed 15 times a second.

“Once the Sender makes a decision about whether to rotate the block, they send ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the Receiver’s brain by concentrating on the corresponding light,” said first author , a student in the Allen School’s combined bachelor’s/master’s degree program.

The Senders wore electroencephalography caps that picked up electrical activity in their brains. The lights’ different flashing patterns trigger unique types of activity in the brain, which the caps can pick up. So, as the Senders stared at the light for their corresponding selection, the cap picked up those signals, and the computer provided real-time feedback by displaying a cursor on the screen that moved toward their desired choice. The selections were then translated into a “Yes” or “No” answer that could be sent over the internet to the Receiver.

“To deliver the message to the Receiver, we used a cable that ends with a wand that looks like a tiny racket behind the Receiver’s head. This coil stimulates the part of the brain that translates signals from the eyes,” said co-author , a 91̽��assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, or I-LABS. “We essentially ‘trick’ the neurons in the back of the brain to spread around the message that they have received signals from the eyes. Then participants have the sensation that bright arcs or objects suddenly appear in front of their eyes.”

If the answer was, “Yes, rotate the block,” then the Receiver would see the bright flash. If the answer was “No,” then the Receiver wouldn’t see anything. The Receiver received input from both Senders before making a decision about whether to rotate the block. Because the Receiver also wore an electroencephalography cap, they used the same method as the Senders to select yes or no.

The Senders got a chance to review the Receiver’s decision and send corrections if they disagreed. Then, once the Receiver sent a second decision, everyone in the group found out if they cleared the line. On average, each group successfully cleared the line 81% of the time, or for 13 out of 16 trials.

The researchers wanted to know if the Receiver would learn over time to trust one Sender over the other based on their reliability. The team purposely picked one of the Senders to be a “bad Sender” and flipped their responses in 10 out of the 16 trials — so that a “Yes, rotate the block” suggestion would be given to the Receiver as “No, don’t rotate the block,” and vice versa. Over time, the Receiver switched from being relatively neutral about both Senders to strongly preferring the information from the “good Sender.”

The team hopes that these results pave the way for future brain-to-brain interfaces that allow people to collaborate to solve tough problems that one brain alone couldn’t solve. The researchers also believe this is an appropriate time to start to have a larger conversation about the ethics of this kind of brain augmentation research and developing protocols to ensure that people’s privacy is respected as the technology improves. The group is working with the at the Center for Neurotechnology to address these types of issues.

“But for now, this is just a baby step. Our equipment is still expensive and very bulky and the task is a game,” Rao said. “We’re in the ‘Kitty Hawk’ days of brain interface technologies: We’re just getting off the ground.”

Co-authors include , a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University who completed this research as a 91̽��undergraduate in computer science and neurobiology; , a research assistant at I-LABS; and , an associate professor in the Department of Psychology and I-LABS. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, a W.M. Keck Foundation Award and a Levinson Emerging Scholars Award.

###

For more information, contact Jiang at prestonj@cs.washington.edu, Stocco at stocco@uw.edu or Rao at rao@cs.washington.edu.

Grant number: EEC-1028725

Brain-computer interfaces have the potential to give patients better and more natural control over their prosthetic devices. Through this method, a chip in a patient’s brain picks up a thought — neural activity triggered by focusing on specific visual imagery — to move a joint and then transmits that signal to the prosthetic.

This technology is not widely available yet, but as it progresses through research trials, ethical questions are emerging about users’ sense of control over their own actions. For example: Who is responsible if a prosthetic limb malfunctions and strikes someone in a crowd — the patient or the device?

To address these types of questions, 91̽�� researchers in the are studying how brain-computer interfaces affect whether patients feel they are in charge of their own actions. For this research, the team will receive .

“Neuroscience offers a deeper understanding of the brain and gives us the prospect of new ways to treat diseases or affect how the brain functions,” said , a 91̽��associate professor of philosophy and the team lead for the project. “Given how closely we associate the function of our brains with who we are as individuals, it is valuable to explore the implications of this research. Then people can better understand their options before enrolling in a study, and researchers can design devices that better suit users’ needs and values.”

The team aims to examine multiple types of brain-computer interfaces that currently are being tested in clinical studies, not just those that control prosthetics. In using to treat Parkinson’s disease or depression, a patient might wonder: Is my action the result of something I did, or something the stimulator did? And with devices that help patients sense touch, a patient might ask: Is this interface correctly telling me how hard I am squeezing someone’s hand?

By looking at how these devices affect the degree to which patients sense they are in control of their own actions and emotions, the researchers hope to develop tools that can help future patients feel better equipped to remain in control.

“We will start this process by ’embedding’ ethicists within neural engineering labs that are studying different brain-computer interfaces,” said Dr. , an affiliate assistant professor of philosophy at the 91̽��and an assistant professor of neurology at Oregon Health & Science University who is the co-leader on this project. “These ethicists will work side by side with the researchers in the lab, as well as interview both researchers and research participants about their perspectives on brain-computer interfaces.”

The grant will fund one or two new researchers who will work in different labs over the course of the project. Some of these labs are part of the Center for Neurotechnology, which is based at the UW, while others are at Massachusetts General Hospital, University of Freiburg in Germany, University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, Brown University and Caltech.

After compiling perspectives across all labs, the team will develop a series of questions to give to future patients who are considering enrolling in a study to receive a brain-computer interface. They can use these questions to better prepare for informed consent discussions with researchers, Goering said.

“We’re hoping that the close attention we pay to users’ experiences operating brain-computer interfaces will help us understand how to help prospective users be informed about the tradeoffs they might be making,” she said. “In addition, we also want to help researchers in the field think carefully about next-generation device design, so that this technology will maintain or enhance a user’s sense of control.”

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For more information, contact Goering at sgoering@uw.edu and Klein at kleineuw@uw.edu.

Building on seven years of research that helps patients with sensory and motor neurological disorders, the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering is updating its name to the (CNT). The CNT, which is based at the 91̽�� but includes researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, San Diego State University, Caltech and other partners, changed its name to highlight the key role that neurotechnologies play in its mission.

“In the beginning, our mission was quite broad, ranging from developing virtual reality therapies for rehabilitation to creating anthropomorphic robotic hands for amputees,” said , co-director of the CNT and a professor in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “Over the years, we have narrowed our focus to maximize our impact in an area in which we are acknowledged as leaders in the field: developing neurotechnologies that can electrically record and stimulate the brain and spinal cord to repair damaged neural circuits.”

Rao and co-director wanted the center’s name to reflect this shift.

“Our team has pioneered the concept of engineered neuroplasticity, the idea that we can use electronic devices to guide the nervous system to rewire and heal after injury,” said Moritz, who is an associate professor with joint appointments in UW’s electrical engineering department and 91̽��Medicine’s rehabilitation medicine and physiology & biophysics departments.

The name change comes as the National Science Foundation announced Aug. 31 that it will renew the center’s funding, promising up to $8.4 million over the next three years.

Since 2011, the CNT has received $27 million from the NSF and has made significant research advances in the field of engineering neuroplasticity, developed educational tools about neurotechnology and brain-computer interfaces, and become a leader in the field of neuroethics.

“As we build devices that directly interact with the brain, and even change the wiring of the nervous system, it is critical that we address the ethical implications of our work at the earliest stages of design and implementation,” Moritz said.

Looking to the future, both co-directors are excited to see how the neurotechnologies the CNT develops will help patients with a variety of neurological conditions regain lost functions.

“We are proud of the vibrant multidisciplinary community of collaborating students and researchers that the center has created over the past seven years,” said Rao, who is the of computer science & engineering and electrical engineering. “I doubt if there is any other center in the world where you will find philosophy students embedded in engineering labs asking important neuroethics questions on a project that also involves neurosurgeons and industry partners.”

Scroll down to see more of the CNT’s accomplishments:

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For more information, contact Moritz at ctmoritz@uw.edu and Rao at rpnr@uw.edu.

Essential tremor is the world’s most common movement disorder, affecting an estimated 7 million people in the U.S. alone. The hallmark of this disease is an involuntary, rhythmic shaking during intentional movement, complicating everyday tasks like writing, eating and drinking. When resting or sleeping, however, most patients have few or no symptoms.

The disease can be treated with a surgical procedure called , or DBS, where a neurosurgeon implants an electrode deep in the brain; this wire is then tunneled under the skin to a battery in the chest, which provides electrical stimulation that quiets the symptoms. In current use, however, these implanted devices are constantly “on” — delivering stimulation even when a patient doesn’t need it — which wastes valuable battery life.

For the first time, 91̽�� researchers have combined electrodes on top of the brain to sense movement in the parts of the body that experience essential tremor, along with a deep brain electrode, to deliver stimulation only when it’s needed. The approach, developed by electrical engineers, 91̽��Medicine researchers and ethicists at the at UW, is described in a to be published in a forthcoming issue of .

It’s an important step toward developing fully-implanted, closed-loop deep brain stimulators to treat disorders like essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease — devices that one day might be controlled by the patient’s own thoughts or movements.

“We’d ultimately like to give individuals that ability and choice,” said co-author , a 91̽��electrical engineering doctoral candidate and member of the CSNE team. “One side effect of deep brain stimulation can be difficulty speaking, for instance. So if you’re about to drink a glass of water, you might want to turn up the stimulation so your hand doesn’t shake. If you’re answering the phone, perhaps you’d want to turn it down so your speech isn’t affected.”

Delivering deep brain stimulation also can extend the battery life of these implanted devices, which currently last only three to five years.  Lengthening battery life is important because replacing the battery requires surgery, which carries risks to the patient such as infection.

“We’re saving about half of the battery power, based on our subjects so far, which was one of our main motivations,” said senior author and 91̽��electrical engineering professor . “But even more interesting are some early indications that suggest our closed-loop system results in better patient performance, with less tremor, better control of their hands and fewer side effects.”

In the video above, essential tremor patients drew spirals under three conditions — with their deep brain stimulator turned off (left), with the device constantly on (middle) and with the 91̽��CSNE system that delivers stimulation as needed (right). In the latter two conditions, patients experienced significant and comparable relief from tremor symptoms that cause their hands to shake.

The project originated in a partnership between the CSNE and medical device manufacturer Medtronic to test new ways of with essential tremor patients. This system not only delivers electrical stimulation like traditional DBS systems, but also has the capability to sense and respond to electrical signals generated by the brain itself. The 91̽��team received an investigational device exemption from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for these tests.

To treat essential tremor, a surgeon typically implants an electrode in the thalamus of a patient’s brain. It’s wired down the neck to another implanted device housed under the clavicle that contains a battery and the electronics that drive the system. This “open-loop” system, in clinical use today, delivers constant deep brain stimulation at levels set by a doctor.

In three patients who received the Medtronic Activa PC+S Deep Brain Stimulation system, 91̽��Medicine surgeons also implanted a small strip of electrodes on top of the brain’s motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls movement. The electrode strip can be used to sense when a hand or other extremity affected by essential tremor is moving. In a key innovation, the team developed machine learning algorithms to “decode” neural signals coming from the brain and correlate them with essential tremor symptoms that warrant treatment by stimulation.

The neural biomarkers and algorithms used to “decode” them differ by disease. While a similar treatment approach has been documented for Parkinson’s disease, this is the first time neural signals have been used to selectively treat essential tremor.

“This is exciting both for treating those patients with essential tremor, but also for future uses,” says , a CSNE team leader and neurosurgeon with the 91̽��Medicine Neurosciences Institute.  “This represents the first time a person can control their implanted device through the voluntary use of brain signals. We now can see a direct path to all sorts of uses in stroke, paralysis or other neurologic conditions that may be treated in the future using this general approach.”

Most essential tremor patients have symptoms only during intentional movement — when they move their arm to eat, drink or write, for instance. The 91̽��CSNE closed-loop system detects that movement and only delivers stimulation to quiet the tremor symptoms when needed.

“DBS results in some of my most grateful patients,” said team member and co-author , a neurosurgeon at the 91̽��Medicine Neurosciences Institute who implanted the devices. “They used to call this disease ‘benign essential tremor,’ but it isn’t that benign. Patients don’t go out to eat because they spill food and drink. They stop having friends over because they can’t pour a cup of coffee. They can’t sign checks. They need help getting dressed. Regular DBS works really well to give people their lives back. What we are working on is taking a really good treatment and making it even better.”

To test how well the systems worked, the research team asked the patients to perform simple motor tasks — such as drawing a spiral shape with a pen, writing sentences or trying to hold their hands steady — under three conditions: With their Medtronic implanted deep brain stimulator turned off, with the system that delivered constant stimulation and with the new system that only delivered stimulation as needed.

With no stimulation, the patients experienced tremor throughout the tasks. The effectiveness of the CSNE team’s new system in quieting the tremor symptoms was comparable to the open-loop system — but with greater energy savings.

In the experiments described in the paper, the computational tasks were performed on an external laptop next to the patient. Next steps include transferring that computational power to the device implanted in the patient’s chest wall — thus creating a fully-implanted, closed-loop deep brain stimulator. The team has received FDA approval to move onto the next step in real-world testing, which is sending patients home with their stimulators in closed-loop mode.

The research was funded by Medtronic, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Co-authors include , a Medtronic biomedical engineer who joined the company after performing the research as a 91̽��doctoral student and CSNE team member, and philosophy doctoral student , who at the CSNE in the .

For more information, contact Chizeck at chizeck@uw.edu. To reach 91̽��Medicine co-authors, contact Susan Gregg at 206-616-6730 or sghanson@uw.edu

Grant numbers: NSF: EEC-1028725