Abstract
Recently Brain-Machine Interface (BMI) is expected as one of the treatment methods for patients with paralysis or limb amputation. However, changes in the nervous system that occur in the course of adaptation to a BMI system are not known in detail. It is very important to investigate the details towards the clinical application. We constructed an experimental system to study plastic changes in the nervous system in a BMI environment based on electrocorticogram (ECoG) using rats. Then, we have confirmed the utility of this experimental system in preliminary experiments. In this system we used power in high gamma band of the signal recorded by one channel of electrode (from 32 channels on the probe) as a trigger to provide the reward of water. Rats didn't know how to get the reward. However, the rats adapted to this system and they could gain the reward. Moreover, the change showed a tendency to converge on the channel that we used as the trigger. Also we are analyzing the changes of neural population responses in surrounding channels and in other frequency bands.
