Abstract
The present paper examines the viability of a radically novel idea for brain–computer interface (BCI), which could lead to novel technological, experimental, and clinical applications. BCIs are computer-based systems that enable either one-way or two-way communication between a living brain and an external machine. BCIs read-out brain signals and transduce them into task commands, which are performed by a machine. In closed loop, the machine can stimulate the brain with appropriate signals. In recent years, it has been shown that there is some ultraweak light emission from neurons within or close to the visible and near-infrared parts of the optical spectrum. Such ultraweak photon emission (UPE) reflects the cellular (and body) oxidative status, and compelling pieces of evidence are beginning to emerge that UPE may well play an informational role in neuronal functions. In fact, several experiments point to a direct correlation between UPE intensity and neural activity, oxidative reactions, EEG activity, cerebral blood flow, cerebral energy metabolism, and release of glutamate. Therefore, we propose a novel skull implant BCI that uses UPE. We suggest that a photonic integrated chip installed on the interior surface of the skull may enable a new form of extraction of the relevant features from the UPE signals. In the current technology landscape, photonic technologies are advancing rapidly and poised to overtake many electrical technologies, due to their unique advantages, such as miniaturization, high speed, low thermal effects, and large integration capacity that allow for high yield, volume manufacturing, and lower cost. For our proposed BCI, we are making some very major conjectures, which need to be experimentally verified, and therefore we discuss the controversial parts, feasibility of technology and limitations, and potential impact of this envisaged technology if successfully implemented in the future.
Highlights
Brain–computer interface (BCI), or generally brain–machine interface (BMI), is a computer-based system that maps brain signals into computer commands or actions
The steps are device level, circuit level, system level (PIC connected to a CMOS array), FIGURE 6 | A typical on-chip ultraweak photon emission (UPE) detector can be built from an array of optical fibers connected to an integrated photonic circuit, which has an output gate composed of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) photosensor array
We propose a radically novel brain–computer interface (BCI) that is based on UPE from the brain
Summary
Brain–computer interface (BCI), or generally brain–machine interface (BMI), is a computer (machine)-based system that maps brain signals into computer (machine) commands or actions. In 2014 (Tang and Dai, 2014) Tang and Dai provided experimental evidence that the glutamate-induced UPE can be transmitted along the axons and in neuronal circuits in mouse These observations raise the following intriguing question: what are the underlying physiological processes that underpin UPE? It has been shown that delayed luminescence emitted from the biological samples provide valid and predictive information about the functional status of biological systems (Musumeci et al, 2005; Niggli et al, 2005, 2008) All this opens novel exciting mathematical and physical questions at the interface of quantum biology. If we consider UPE in the context of metabolism, there has been efforts to propose quantum-metabolism (Demetrius, 2003) As it is well-known, biological systems are essentially isothermal and as such energy flow in living organisms is mediated by differences in the turnover time of various metabolic processes in the cell, which occur cyclically.
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