Digital implementations of thalamocortical neuron models and its application in thalamocortical control using FPGA for Parkinson׳s disease

Abstract

Due to the relay ability of sensory information and communication between cortical regions, the thalamocortical (TC) relay neuron plays an essential role in the therapy of Parkinson׳s disease. This paper first explores a series of efficient methods for the hardware implementation of TC relay neuron models, aiming to reproduce relevant biological behaviors and present appropriate feedback control in neural dynamics in thalamic systems. In addition, a modified two-dimensional TC neuron model is presented for convenient realization to decrease the complexity of the original model and promote the feasibility of the digital design, which shows significance for the large-scale network simulation of TC-based networks and the establishment of digital thalamus. A system-on-a-chip model-based control system is implemented on an FPGA using the modified TC neuron model, which is aimed at the real-time feedback control of tremor dominant Parkinsonian state. In this paper, the hardware syntheses and theoretical researches are given to illustrate the outstanding performance of the presented hardware implementation. The presented platform can be applied in both the brain-machine interface and the robotic control projects, and the proposed modular hardware framework can be extended to the real-time closed-loop treatments of other dyskinesia diseases.