# Reanimating paralyzed hands using an implantable, brain-controlled functional electrical stimulation neuroprosthesis

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2021 · $30,036

## Abstract

Project Summary
 The long-term goal of this study is to reanimate paralyzed hands using a fully implantable brain-controlled
functional electrical stimulation neuroprosthesis for spinal cord injured patients to use at any time. The overall
objective of this proposal, which is the next step toward attainment of the long-term goal, is to present an
implantable brain-controlled hand neuroprosthesis in non-human primates that returns function to paralyzed
musculature through electrical stimulation and does not sacrifice performance. Previous brain-controlled
functional electrical stimulation neuroprostheses required hundreds of wires connected to towers of computers
that consume power at rates unreasonable for portability to obtain the presented decode performance, rendering
usage of the neuroprostheses restricted to the laboratory (Bouton et al. 2016, Ajiboye et al. 2017). The central
hypothesis is that the 300-1,000 Hz spiking band power (SBP) feature will allow safely implantable power levels
while maintaining the decode performance of 30 kSps threshold crossings. The rationale of the proposed
research is that the 15x bandwidth reduction over conventional recording paradigms and single unit specificity
of SBP dramatically cut the power needed to extract features without any loss in single-unit performance. In the
first aim, a low-power multiple degree of freedom decoding method will be developed on an embedded platform.
Irwin et al. demonstrated that SBP can predict open-loop finger position with high performance (Irwin et al. 2016).
However, the monkey performed a single degree of freedom two target acquisition task. It remains unknown if
SBP will maintain high performance when decoding complex movements. Consequently, SBP will be used to
decode the more complicated center-out multiple finger task on the low-power embedded device presented in
Bullard, Nason et al. 2018 (in submission). It is hypothesized that SBP decoders will perform better than threshold
crossing decoders in closed-loop multiple finger tasks, even on the embedded device. The purpose of the second
aim is to investigate closed-loop functional electrical stimulation of hand muscles using the embedded neural
signal processor and the Networked Neuroprosthesis in a non-human primate. To date, the Networked
Neuroprosthesis developed at Case Western Reserve University has been unable to provide intuitive multiple
finger control to cervical level spinal cord injury patients. It is hypothesized that a brain interface is required to
make the Networked Neuroprosthesis intuitive, but there exists no fully implantable solution yet. The device from
the first aim will be used to present an implantable hand neuroprosthesis ready for human clinical trials. The
contribution of this work is expected to be an implantable, intuitive, brain-controlled functional electrical
stimulation hand neuroprosthesis to return some independence to spinal cord injured patients. This contribution
will be significa...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10145745
- **Project number:** 5F31HD098804-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** Samuel Ross Nason-Tomaszewski
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $30,036
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-05-01 → 2022-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10145745

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10145745, Reanimating paralyzed hands using an implantable, brain-controlled functional electrical stimulation neuroprosthesis (5F31HD098804-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10145745. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*