Progress towards restoring upper limb movement and sensation through intracortical brain-computer interfaces

Abstract Bidirectional brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) make use of neural recordings to restore movement while conveying somatosensory information back to the user through direct stimulation of the nervous system. Decades of research on motor control have enabled impressive demonstrations of brain-controlled arm and hand movements in people with paralysis. Furthermore, recent efforts to restore somatosensation have shown that intracortical microstimulation of somatosensory cortex can generate focal, graded, and digit-specific sensations after chronic spinal cord injury. Non-human primate work suggests that restored somatosensation can be used to improve BCI task performance. The combination of BCI-enabled motor control and sensation is an area of recent investigation for human clinical studies, and the interplay between these two domains represents an opportunity for scientific discovery. Here we review recent progress towards the development of bidirectional BCIs.