Patent: Brain Computer Interface based Treatment of Chronic Pain
On November 16th, 2023 Washington University lead the filing of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 63/384,668 “Systems and Methods for Personalized Treatment of Chronic Pain with Brain-Computer Interface and Modular Vibrotactile Apparatus”
If you'd like to learn more about this technology, we published and presented some of our experimental findings at the Design for Medical Devices Conference in Minneapolis, take a look at the Patent Application Documentation here, or read the Abstract below:
I'm proud to be listed as an Inventor along side these awesome engineers and scientists:
Inventors
- LEUTHARDT, Eric
- HAROUTOUNIAN, Simon
- GORLEWICZ, Jenna
- BRUNNER, Peter
- RUSTAMOV, Nabi
- DEMAREST, Phillip
- ADAMS, Joshua
Abstract
Provided herein is a system for treating chronic pain in a patient, the system including a user computing device including a display screen and a brain-computer interface (BCI) device communicatively coupled to the user computing device. The BCI device includes a processor communicatively coupled to an EEG headset and a vibrotactile device. The processor is configured to (i) prompt, through a display screen, the patient to carry out a plurality of cognitive tasks, the plurality of cognitive tasks selected to create theta activation brainwaves in the patient, (ii) monitor progress of the patient toward reaching a predetermined theta activation goal, (iii) display, through the display screen, a visual feedback via a cue, such as a goal bar, showing the progress of the patient in relation to the predetermined theta activation goal, and (iv) activate, in response to the patient reaching the predetermined theta activation goal, the vibrotactile device to generate multi-modal sensory feedback.