Abstract
There is a very strong interest in the feasibility of a brain machine interface as indicated by the number of submissions, citations and downloads from the Journal of Neural Engineering in this area (see the previous editorial, Durand 2006 J. Neural Eng.3 (3) . This interest is clearly understandable. The ability to decode and interpret brain signals could be of critical importance for not only understanding how the brain works but also to control prosthetic devices by pure thought. However, there is a lot more to neural interfacing than the brain machine interface.
The Neural Interfaces Workshop was held at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center on 21–23 August, 2006. This meeting included functional neuromuscular/electrical stimulation, auditory prosthesis, cortical prosthesis, microelectrode array technology as well as brain computer/machine interfaces. The meeting was attended by a diverse group of scientists, engineers, and clinicians, representing the basic and applied science aspects of neural interfaces. Support for this meeting came from the following institutes within the NIH: the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institute of Mental Health, and National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders.
This issue of the Journal of Neural Engineering has a dedicated section covering special aspects of neural interfacing presented at the conference. A report on the presentations and the discussions at the conference written by NIH program officers can be found on page S137 Chen et al. Several papers invited by the Journal of Neural Engineering were chosen to reflect the breadth of neural interfacing within the field of neural engineering. The papers cover a wide range of neural systems from molecular interfacing to clinical restoration of standing/walking in paralyzed patients. The first paper from the Biomedical Engineering Department at Stanford University (Aravanis et al, S143; see also the front cover of the issue) is the first manuscript published in the Journal of Neural Engineering on optogenetic interfacing technology. Neurons in the central nervous system can be genetically modified to respond to light activation in order to control their activity. The second paper from the Case Western Reserve University (Tesfayesus and Durand, page S157 reports on the developments of new methods to recover nerve fascicular signals within the peripheral nervous system. The third paper by Weber et al on page S168 (University of Pittsburg and University of Alberta) describes a set of experiments involving a neural interface with dorsal root ganglia. As noted by the reviewer: `the manuscript is of high interest because it involves DRG recordings in awake behaving animals and attempts to use a combination of recordings to predict the locomotor state'. The final paper (Mushahwar et al, page S181) reviews four different interfacing technologies for restoring standing/walking in patients with spinal cord injuries: surface functional electrical stimulation, implanted muscle-based electrodes, peripheral nerve intraneural arrays and intraspinal microstimulation (ISMS) of the lumbosacral spinal cord.
The Neural Interfaces Workshop has now grown too big and will be replaced by the Neural Interfaces Conference. This change from a NIH-led workshop to a NIH-sponsored conference reflects the strong leadership from the scientific community in this multi-disciplinary area. Announcements for the Neural Interfaces Conference to be held in Spring 2008 will be forthcoming.