From AIT Today, by John E. Whitman

A team of AIT researchers led by Nobel-prize-winner Dr. Emil Pizzaro has finally managed to come up with an AI system that is capable of replacing large parts of a human nervous system.

Dr. Pizzaro explains: “In the Neolithic age of artificial neurointelligence systems (ANIS), we had large computers strapped to the backs of the patients, and these were used to interpret brain signals and send them to an exoskeleton worn by the patient. However, this was bulky enough to cause many problems, not the least of which was the fact that the power cells required to operate the exoskeleton were usually drained within the hour-or were so heavy as to make it impractical to wear the exoskeleton.”

Additionally, while these original exoskeletons may have allowed the patients to make rough movements-something that would have been impossible for them on their own-they did not allow any fine motor movements. Worse yet, the systems did not restore any sensation to the patient’s limbs. The lack of feedback meant that the patients often cut themselves and even broke their bones without realizing it.

The next generation ANIS (pronounced “AN-iss”) devices had lighter power system with longer battery life, but the exoskeletons remained. However, these new systems extended to the patient’s fingers and toes, allowed some amount of fine motor skill. Most patients were grateful to have any means of motor independence, and the systems were wildly popular among those who had a need of them. People who had been confined to wheelchairs for years were finally able to walk on their own once again.

It would be several years before these newly re-enabled walkers would be able to dance though. That came with the advent of the third-generation ANIS systems.

“The big leap forward with the third-generation systems,” Dr. Pizzaro remarks, “was the introduction of the endoskeleton.”

This endoskeleton was composed of a series of ceramic-titanium rods, rings, and joints inserted beneath the patient’s skin throughout the paralyzed regions. The same breathrough Feedback™ battery tech that robot makers harnessed could power the system, and the patient was able to regain almost complete fine motor control. There were, however, still several drawbacks.

First, the procedure was incredibly invasive and time-consuming. Even with modern microsurgical techniques, the prospect of having to basically implant a parallel skeleton under the patient’s skin was not one undertaken lightly. Also, the patients had to forever be on a regimen of antirejection medicines, which lowered their resistance to other diseases. Last, the patients still didn’t have any sensation within their affected regions. While the much finer motor control helped with the situation, patients still found themselves constantly injuring themselves without feeling it.

“In one sense,” says Dr. Pizzaro, “the third generation systems were like a step sideways. They were an improvement in that they were less obvious than the earlier generation and they offered their users a greater degree of independence. But they are nothing like what we’re able to offer today.”

The breakthrough Dr. Pizzaro’s team was able to make was the manufacturing under laboratory conditions of artificial nerves that could be used to reconnect severed or degenerated nervous material in a patient.

“The only real problem from here,” says Dr. Pizzaro, was getting the patient’s brain to be able to read the signals from the new nerves. That’s where the AI comes in.”

Through a patented process to be published in an upcoming issue of AIT Press’s The Journal of Artificial Neurointelligence Systems, Dr. Pizzaro’s team was able to affix a miniature, dedicated AI to the spine of a paraplegic patient. After weeks of training, this device is now able to take the signals received and transmitted by the artificial nerves and translate them into something that the patient’s higher nervous system can understand. And this can all be done using the patient’s existing muscular and nervous systems.

“We’ve already begun our second series of trials with the new system,” Dr. Pizzaro explains, “and it’s been overwhelmingly successful. We currently have over an 80% success rate, and we anticipate that this number will rapidly approach 100% as we learn how to configure the AIs to better recognize the signals from the artificial nerves.

The implications for paraplegics and quadriplegics are overwhelming. Dr. Pizzaro’s advances could make wheelchair ramps -- not to mention wheelchairs -- a thing of the past.

Better yet, since this latest ANIS uses the patient’s existing nervous system, it can actually return sensation to the patient’s skin. “Hot, cold, pleasure, pain-it’s all there,” says Dr. Pizarro. “It’s a truly humbling thing to see the effect this has on the lives of these people. Imagine being able to actually feel again after years, or an entire lifetime, of nothing but numbness. Every one of the trial patients has broken down in tears.”

But it doesn’t end there. Dr. Pizzaro is hopeful that his team’s advances will have broader ramifications as well. “Just think what this could do for victims of a variety of degenerative nervous system diseases. People suffering from ailments ranging from leprosy to ALS could have their lives back, even if only for a little while.”

The next-generation of ANIS is incapable of taking control of a patient’s autonomic nervous system, but even that may only be a short ways off. Until then, the system can certainly extend the quality of the lives of victims of degenerative diseases.