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How the engineering field of biomedical signal processing is helping doctors understand the brain and treat patients
Biomedical signal processing is an incredibly diverse field of engineering. It’s all about extracting useful information from the signals our bodies use to keep everything working. These are mainly the electrical signals which travel through nerve fibres and the cells in our brains.
This means that biomedical signal processing involves investigating ways in which we can image the brain by using the signals it produces. It also looks at how else we can use the information contained in those signals. This could be using nerve signals to control prosthetic devices or it could be developing machines which can read our minds.
This might sound like science fiction but engineers are making it happen now. People with severe hearing loss can receive a cochlear implant to restore some hearing to them. This involves having a tiny microphone fitted near the ear and an implant inside the ear which receives signals from the microphone and stimulates the auditory nerves in the cochlea. This provides the brain with signals which it can interpret as sounds.
Engineering brainwaves
Research is also being done into how patients with brain injuries can be encouraged to generate certain brain patterns by associating them with musical sounds. A sensor cap is placed on the patient’s head, this reads brain patterns, passes them to a computer which uses them to create the musical notes.
The next step is creating devices that physically plug into the nervous system and can be directly controlled by the brain. The technology to do this may not be too far away.
Using these nerve signals to directly read someone’s mind is probably still a long way off. However, a technique called Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) can show us which areas of the brain are being used during certain particular tasks. In fact, scientists have been able to use this technique to identify which of a selection of pictures a subject is seeing at a given time.
Other recent research by engineers at NASA has shown that when we talk to ourselves without making sounds, such as when we are silently reading a book, our brain still sends signals to the larynx and jaw. These signals can be picked up and read. This technology was originally designed to allow communication in noisy environments but it could also possibly be used to hear things that people suppose they are really just thinking.
Watch the Brain waves video to find out more about the cochlear implant, fMRI scanners and other engineering developments in the field of Biomedical Signal Processing.
Interested in working in engineering? Check out the Introduction to engineering for more information about how you could help change people’s lives.
