Georgia Tech has created a functional MRI-compatible rehab device for stroke patients that creates a long latency stretch reflex at the exact time as a brain signal. Pictured left to right: Jun Ueda (associate professor in the George Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering), Lauren Lacey (Georgia Tech master’s graduate student in ME) and Minoru Shinohara (associate professor in the College of Science’s Human Neuromuscular Physiology Lab).
A pneumatic actuator tendon hammer hits a person’s wrist while a transcranial magnetic stimulator creates a weak signal in the brain’s motor cortex. The responses overlap in the brain, produce and send a strong signal back to the arm, and the wrist moves.
The Georgia Tech device tabs a person’s wrist while a transcranial magnetic stimulator (TMS) creates a signal in the brain.
Read: Device Helps Rebuild Neural Connections for Stroke Patients
