Application — Intracortical
Patterned ICMS for tactile edges and motion in human somatosensory cortex, 2025
Patterned ICMS for tactile edges and motion in human somatosensory cortex, 2025
Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of primary somatosensory cortex (S1) with spatiotemporal patterns across several electrodes, to give people with paralysis information about the local geometry and apparent motion of objects on their skin. First author G. Valle; last author Sliman J. Bensmaia (University of Chicago). Published in Science, 2025.
Participants and hardware
- Two participants (c1 and c2) with cervical spinal cord injuries.
- Four Utah arrays (Blackrock Neurotech) were implanted in participants c1 and c2, two of them in the hand representation of Brodmann’s area 1 of S1, localized with fMRI and/or MEG. See the catalog’s Utah microelectrode array sheet.
- Author affiliations in the Europe PMC record include the University of Chicago, the University of Pittsburgh (Rehab Neural Engineering Labs), Northwestern University, the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab and Chalmers University of Technology.
Results as stated
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Orientation recognition vs duration | Reached asymptote at 0.5 s (78%, n=225); no effect of amplitude |
| Shape identification (two projected fields) | c1 72 to 82% (n=200), c2 48 to 50% (n=120), digits 2 and 3 |
| Three-field shapes | c1 57 to 60% (n=160) |
| Brain-controlled bionic arm steering, driven only by ICMS sensations | 85% (n=40) without cognitive load; 80% with low and 50% with high cognitive load |
Limits
Two participants, with c1 doing most of the harder tasks. The disclosures say two authors consult for Blackrock Neurotech and several received research funding from it, which the paper says did not support this work.
Primary sources
- Valle G et al., Tactile edges and motion via patterned microstimulation of the human somatosensory cortex, Science (2025), DOI 10.1126/science.adq5978; author manuscript PMC11994950.