Bensmaia Lab - University of Chicago

Bensmaia Lab - University of Chicago Research in somatosensory neuroscience and neuroprosthetics Indeed, without these signals, controlling the arm is very slow, clumsy, and effortful.

Texture perception
We are exquisitely sensitive to surface texture, able to distinguish between very fine materials, such as satin and silk. These abilities rely on three different populations of receptors that innervate the skin and call upon different encoding strategies. Indeed, coarse spatial features are reflected in spatial patterns of activity in one population of afferents while fine featu

res, which require exploratory movements to be tangible, are encoded in precise temporal patterns of spiking in the other two receptor populations. Tactile texture processing thus affords us a unique opportunity to investigate how different neural codes operate and how these codes are integrated to culminate in a unified sensory percept. Proprioception
We are aware of the position and movements of our limbs in space and these sensory signals are critical to our ability to plan and perform motor actions. Despite its importance, little is known about how proprioceptive information about the limb is encoded in the responses of neurons in primary somatosensory cortex (S1). To fill this gap, we track the movements of the limb as animals perform different motor tasks while recording the activity evoked in S1 neurons. We then use a variety of mathematical techniques to reveal what aspects of the neuronal response convey information about hand movements and posture. Neuroprosthetics
One approach to restoring sensorimotor function in amputees or tetraplegic patients consists in equipping them with anthropomorphic robotic arms that are interfaced directly with the nervous system. To control these arms, not only must motor intention be translated into movements of the limb, but sensory signals must be transmitted from the limb to the patient. With this in mind, we develop approaches to convey meaningful and naturalistic sensations through stimulation of peripheral or cortical neurons, attempting to reproduce, to the extent possible, the patterns of neuronal activation that are relevant for basic object manipulation. We anticipate that these studies will constitute an important step towards restoring touch to those who have lost it.

Bensmaia lab retreat on a Yacht.
07/29/2023

Bensmaia lab retreat on a Yacht.

We are able to precisely apply appropriate forces on objects thanks to tactile signals from the hand. We develop an appr...
07/18/2023

We are able to precisely apply appropriate forces on objects thanks to tactile signals from the hand. We develop an approach to convey such signals via ICMS of S1 for bionic hands.

Manual interactions with objects are supported by tactile signals from the hand. This tactile feedback can be restored in brain-controlled bionic hands via intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of somatosensory cortex (S1). In ICMS-based tactile feedback, contact force can be signaled by modulating....

ICMS to human S1 evokes touch sensations experienced over a spatially restricted patch of skin. We take a deep dive into...
07/18/2023

ICMS to human S1 evokes touch sensations experienced over a spatially restricted patch of skin. We take a deep dive into the size, distribution, reliability, and neural determinants of these so-called projected fields.

When we interact with objects, signals from the hand convey information about the objects and our interactions with them. A basic feature of these interactions, the locations of contacts between the hand and object, is often only available via the sense of touch. Information about locations of conta...

Recent-ish lab photo at the Promontory Point.
07/18/2023

Recent-ish lab photo at the Promontory Point.

Working toward restoring touch to the chest after mastectomy using bionic tech, we investigated touch in intact breasts....
10/06/2022

Working toward restoring touch to the chest after mastectomy using bionic tech, we investigated touch in intact breasts. It turned out to be more interesting than we had originally thought. Written with Katie Long, Emily Fitzgerald, Ev Berger-Wolf, Charles Greenspon, and Stacy Lindau.

The sense of touch plays a key role in our experience of our body and our interactions with the world, from the objects we manipulate to the people we touch. While tactile sensibility and its neural basis have been extensively characterized for the glabrous skin of the hand, much less is known about...

Check out our new manuscript, written with Thierri Callier and Michael Harvey: The ms-scale temporal patterning in the r...
10/06/2022

Check out our new manuscript, written with Thierri Callier and Michael Harvey: The ms-scale temporal patterning in the responses of S1 neurons plays a key role in shaping judgments of vibratory frequency. But of course, it's more complicated than that.

Millisecond-scale temporal spiking patterns encode sensory information in the early stages of processing along the neuraxis, but their role in cortex remains controversial. The sense of touch provides a window into temporal coding because tactile neurons often exhibit precise, repeatable, and inform...

Check out the review I wrote with Justin Lieber on the neural basis of texture perception. Texture engages a variety of ...
10/06/2022

Check out the review I wrote with Justin Lieber on the neural basis of texture perception. Texture engages a variety of neural mechanisms, gives rise to a complex sensory experience, and opens a window into the innerworkings of the sense of touch. Cool huh?

Running our fingers across a textured surface gives rise to two types of skin deformations, each transduced by different tactile nerve fibers. Coarse …

Posted on the archive: We show that ICMS delivered to human somatosensory cortex (S1) activates motor cortex (M1), this ...
08/14/2022

Posted on the archive: We show that ICMS delivered to human somatosensory cortex (S1) activates motor cortex (M1), this activity is task-dependent and somatotopically patterned, and disrupts motor decoding. Collaboration between the University of Chicago, the University of Pittsburgh, and Northwestern University. Check it out!
Natalya Shelchkova, John Downey, Charles Greenspon, Elizaveta Okorokova, Anton Sobinov, Ceci Verbaarschot, Qinpu He, Caleb Sponheim, Ariana Tortolani, Dalton Moore, Matt Kaufman, Ray Lee, David Satzer, Jorge Gonzalez-Martinez, Peter Warnke, Lee Miller, Robert Gaunt, Jen Collinger, Nicho Hatsopoulos, & Sliman Bensmaia

Intracortical microstimulation (ICMS) of somatosensory cortex (S1) can be used to restore tactile feedback to people with spinal cord injury via brain controlled bionic hands. Anatomical and neurophysiological evidence from various animal species points to a communication pathway between motor and s...

Check out this paper I wrote with Eiman Azim, Lee Miller, and Chris VerSteeg in Scientific American about our efforts to...
05/20/2022

Check out this paper I wrote with Eiman Azim, Lee Miller, and Chris VerSteeg in Scientific American about our efforts to understand the function of the cuneate nucleus.

Several recent studies point to a small, long-overlooked structure in the brain stem as a crucial gatekeeper for the body’s signals

For artificial touch via peripheral nerve interfaces, sensation quality depends on the frequency of stimulation up to 60...
03/16/2022

For artificial touch via peripheral nerve interfaces, sensation quality depends on the frequency of stimulation up to 60Hz. Above 60Hz, quality is constant. Check out this work with Emily Graczyk. Breanne Christie, Qinpu He, and Dustin Tyler.

Electrical stimulation of the peripheral nerves of human participants provides a unique opportunity to study the neural determinants of perceptual quality using a causal manipulation. A major challenge in the study of neural coding of touch has been to isolate the role of spike timing—at the scale...

Millisecond-precision spike timing in primate somatosensory cortex is informative about texture and shapes the perceptio...
03/16/2022

Millisecond-precision spike timing in primate somatosensory cortex is informative about texture and shapes the perception thereof. Very proud of this work with Katie Long and Justin Lieber.

Neuroscientists seek to understand how neuronal signals carry information and drive perception. Here, the authors show that millisecond-level spike timing in somatosensory cortex is informative about texture and shapes the evoked sensory experience.

Write up about our efforts to figure out how the brain controls the hand.
01/20/2022

Write up about our efforts to figure out how the brain controls the hand.

A new robotic system utilizing high-tech sensors and a deep learning-based computer vision system will allow for unprecedented accuracy and clarity while tracking the motions and forces of the hand

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