History and Overview of Neural Engineering

Extensive research on control of movement by hundreds of neuroscientists has revealed correlations between parameters of limb movement and neural activity in many motor centers, including the primary motor cortex, premotor and supplementary motor cortex, cerebellum, and spinal cord. In the 1950s, a human study showing sound perception arising from electrode implantation inspired researchers across the world to investigate the possibility of a cochlear prosthesis, which, aer several decades of development in academia and industry, became the rst FDA-approved neural prosthesis. Later research, beginning in the 1990s focused on control using neural signals, in both nonhuman primate and human subjects, lending credence to the notion that sucient information may be extracted from neural signals to be used as a control signal for a prosthetic system. Cyberonics conducted trials of vagal nerve stimulation for epilepsy in human patients beginning in 1988 and achieved clinical approval for its use as an adjuvant therapy in 1997.