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Announcements

"Richard Andersen, Neuroscientist and Leading Researcher in Brain-Machine Interfaces." Caltech Heritage Project 2024

USA Today: Elon Musk First Neuralink Brain Implant

Caltech News: Ultrasound Enables Less-Invasive Brain–Machine Interfaces

Caltech Watson Lecture Series - Unlocking Movement - Richard Andersen

Caltech News: Brain-Machine Interface Device Predicts Internal Speech

Richard Andersen: The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography, Volume 12 Edited by Thomas D. Albright and Larry R. Squire ISBN: 978-0-916110-11-6. <pdf version>

New Publications

"Richard Andersen, Neuroscientist and Leading Researcher in Brain-Machine Interfaces." Caltech Heritage Project 2024

Whitney S. Griggs, Sumner L. Norman, Thomas Deffieux, Florian Segura, Bruno-Félix Osmanski, Geeling Chau, Vasileios Christopoulos, Charles Liu, Mickael Tanter, Mikhail G. Shapiro, Richard A. Andersen "Decoding Motor Plans Using a Closed-Loop Ultrasonic Brain-Machine Interface" Nature Neuroscience 2023; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-023-01500-7 <pdf version>

Claire Rabut, Sumner L. Norman, Whitney S. Griggs, Jonathan J. Russin, Kay Jann, Vasileios Christopoulos, Charles Liu, Richard A. Andersen, Mikhail G. Shapiro. "A window to the brain: ultrasound imaging of human neural activity through a permanent acoustic window" bioRxiv 2023 https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.14.544094 <pdf version>

Charles Guan, Tyson Aflalo, Kelly Kadlec, Jorge Gámez de Leon, Emily R. Rosario, Ausaf Bari, Nader Pouratian and Richard A. Andersen. "Decoding and geometry of ten finger movements in human posterior parietal cortex and motor cortex" Journal of Neural Engineering 2023. https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/acd3b1 <pdf version>

Isabelle A. Rosenthal, Luke Bashford, Spencer Kellis, Kelsie Pejsa, Brian Lee, Charles Liu, Richard A. Andersen. "S1 represents multisensory contexts and somatotopic locations within and outside the bounds of the cortical homunculus" Cell Reports, Volume 42, Issue 4, 2023, 112312, ISSN 2211-1247, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2023.112312. <pdf version>

Research

Our behaviors are dictated by our intentions, but we have only recently begun to understand how the brain forms intentions to act. The posterior parietal cortex is situated between the sensory and the movement regions of the cerebral cortex and serves as a bridge from sensation to action. We have found that an anatomical map of intentions exists within this area, with one part devoted to planning eye movements and another part to planning arm movements (Andersen and Buneo 2002). The action plans exist in a cognitive form, specifying the goal of the intended movement.  Current studies involve examining decision making, stages in motor planning, coordinate transformations for sensory guided movements and motion perception.  In recent years we have also used the findings from these animal studies to develop brain-machine interfaces using intention signals recorded from the posterior parietal cortex of tetraplegic human participants (Aflalo et al. 2015).

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