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Neuromarketing Applications of Neuroprosthetic Devices: An Assessment of Neural Implants’ Capacities for Gathering Data and Influencing Behavior
Abstract
Neuromarketing utilizes innovative technologies to accomplish two key tasks: 1) gathering data about the ways in which human beings’ cognitive processes can be influenced by particular stimuli; and 2) creating and delivering stimuli to influence the behavior of potential consumers. In this text, we argue that rather than utilizing specialized systems such as EEG and fMRI equipment (for data gathering) and web-based microtargeting platforms (for influencing behavior), it will increasingly be possible for neuromarketing practitioners to perform both tasks by accessing and exploiting neuroprosthetic devices already possessed by members of society. We first present an overview of neuromarketing and neuroprosthetic devices. A two-dimensional conceptual framework is then developed that can be used to identify the technological and biocybernetic capacities of different types of neuroprosthetic devices for performing neuromarketing-related functions. One axis of the framework delineates the main functional types of sensory, motor, and cognitive neural implants; the other describes the key neuromarketing activities of gathering data on consumers’ cognitive activity and influencing their behavior. This framework is then utilized to identify potential neuromarketing applications for a diverse range of existing and anticipated neuroprosthetic technologies. It is hoped that this analysis of the capacities of neuroprosthetic devices to be utilized in neuromarketing-related roles can: 1) lay a foundation for subsequent analyses of whether such potential applications are desirable or inappropriate from ethical, legal, and operational perspectives; and 2) help information security professionals develop effective mechanisms for protecting neuroprosthetic devices against inappropriate or undesired neuromarketing techniques while safeguarding legitimate neuromarketing activities.
With the recent increasing interest of researchers for Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), emerges a challenge for safety and security fields. Thus, the general objective of this research is to explore, from an engineering perspective, the trends and main research needs on the risks and applications of BCIs in safety and security fields. In addition, the specific objective is to explore the BCIs as an emerging risk. The method used consists of the sequential application of two phases. The first phase is carried out a scoping literature review. And with the second phase, the BCIs are analyzed as an emerging risk. With the first phase, thematic categories are analyzed. The categories are fatigue detection, safety control, and risk identification within the safety field. And within the security field are the categories cyberattacks and authentication. As a result, a trend is identified that considers the BCI as a source of risk and as a technology for risk prevention. Also, another trend based on the definitions and concepts of safety and security applied to BCIs is identified. Thus, "BCI safety" and "BCI security" are defined. The second phase proposes a general emerging risk framing of the BCI technology based on the qualitative results of type, level, and management strategies for emerging risk. These results define a framework for studying the safety and security of BCIs. In addition, there are two challenges. Firstly, to design techniques to assess the BCI risks. Secondly, probably more critical, to define the tolerability criteria of individual and social risk.
Article link:
https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0925-7535(22)00390-3
This text develops a model based on network topology that can be used to analyze or engineer the structures and dynamics of an organization in which neuroprosthetic technologies are employed to enhance the abilities of human personnel. We begin by defining neuroprosthetic supersystems as organizations whose members include multiple neuroprosthetically augmented human beings. It is argued that the expanded sensory, cognitive, and motor capacities provided by ‘posthumanizing’ neuroprostheses may enable human beings possessing such technologies to collaborate using novel types of organizational structures that differ from the traditional structures that are possible for unaugmented human beings. The concept of network topology is then presented as a concrete approach to analyzing or engineering such neuroprosthetic supersystems. A number of common network topologies such as chain, linear bus, tree, ring, hub-and-spoke, partial mesh, and fully connected mesh topologies are discussed and their relative advantages and disadvantages noted.
Drawing on the notion of different architectural ‘views’ employed in enterprise architecture, we formulate a topological model that incorporates five views that are relevant for neuroprosthetic supersystems: the (1) physical and (2) logical topologies of the neuroprosthetic devices themselves; (3) the natural topology of social relations of the devices’ human hosts; (4) the topology of the virtual environments, if any, created and accessed by means of the neuroprostheses; and (5) the topology of the brain-to-brain communication, if any, facilitated by the devices. Potential uses of the model are illustrated by applying it to four hypothetical types of neuroprosthetic supersystems: (1) an emergency medical alert system incorporating body sensor networks (BSNs); (2) an array of centrally hosted virtual worlds; (3) a ‘hive mind’ administered by a central hub; and (4) a distributed hive mind lacking a central hub.
It is our hope that models such as the one formulated here will prove useful not only for engineering neuroprosthetic supersystems to meet functional requirements but also for analyzing the legal, ethical, and social aspects of potential or existing supersystems, to ensure that the organizational deployment of neuroprosthetic technologies does not undermine the wellbeing of such devices’ human users or of societies as a whole.
When designing target architectures for organizations, the discipline of enterprise architecture has historically relied a set of assumptions regarding the physical, cognitive, and social capacities of the human beings serving as organizational members. In this text we explore the fact that for those organizations that intentionally deploy posthumanizing neuroprosthetic technologies among their personnel, such traditional assumptions no longer hold true: the use of advanced neuroprostheses intensifies the ongoing structural, systemic, and procedural fusion of human personnel and electronic information systems in a way that provides workers with new capacities and limitations and transforms the roles available to them.
Such use of neuroprostheses has the potential to affect an organization’s workers in three main areas. First, the use of neuroprostheses may affect workers’ physical form, as reflected in the physical components of their bodies, the role of design in their physical form, their length of tenure as workers, the developmental cycles that they experience, their spatial extension and locality, the permanence of their physical substrates, and the nature of their personal identity. Second, neuroprostheses may affect the information processing and cognition of neurocybernetically augmented workers, as manifested in their degree of sapience, autonomy, and volitionality; their forms of knowledge acquisition; their locus of information processing and data storage; their emotionality and cognitive biases; and their fidelity of data storage, predictability of behavior, and information security vulnerabilities. Third, the deployment of neuroprostheses can affect workers’ social engagement, as reflected in their degree of sociality; relationship to organizational culture; economic relationship with their employers; and rights, responsibilities, and legal status.
While ethical, legal, economic, and functional factors will prevent most organizations from deploying advanced neuroprostheses among their personnel for the foreseeable future, a select number of specialized organizations (such as military departments) are already working to develop such technologies and implement them among their personnel. The enterprise architectures of such organizations will be forced to evolve to accommodate the new realities of human-computer integration brought about by the posthumanizing neuroprosthetic technologies described in this text.
The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) seeks to generate alignment between an organization’s electronic information systems, human resources, business processes, workplace culture, mission and strategy, and external ecosystem in order to increase the organization’s ability to manage complexity, resolve internal conflicts, and adapt proactively to environmental change. In this text, an introduction to the definition, history, organizational role, objectives, benefits, mechanics, and popular implementations of enterprise architecture is presented. The historical shift from IT-centric to business-centric definitions of EA is reviewed, along with the difference between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches to EA. The unique organizational role of EA is highlighted by comparing it with other management disciplines and practices.
The creation of alignment is explored as the core mechanism by which EA achieves advantageous effects. Different kinds of alignment are defined, the history of EA as a generator of alignment is investigated, and EA’s relative effectiveness at creating different types of alignment is candidly assessed. Attention is given to the key dynamic by which alignment yields deeper integration of an organization’s structures, processes, and systems, which in turn grants the organization greater agility – which itself enhances the organization’s ability to implement rapid and strategically directed change. The types of tasks undertaken by enterprise architects are discussed, and a number of popular enterprise architecture frameworks are highlighted. A generic EA framework is then presented as a means of discussing elements such as architecture domains, building blocks, views, and landscapes that form the core of many EA frameworks. The role of modelling languages in documenting EA plans is also addressed.
In light of enterprise architecture’s strengths as a tool for managing the deployment of innovative forms of IT, it is suggested that by adopting EA initiatives of the sort described here, organizations may better position themselves to address the new social, economic, and operational realities presented by emerging ‘posthumanizing’ technologies such as those relating to social robotics, nanorobotics, artificial life, genetic engineering, neuroprosthetic augmentation, and virtual reality.
This text examines the types of organizations that are already working to intentionally deploy neuroprosthetic technologies for human enhancement among their workforce (or are expected to do so), factors that affect their adoption of such technologies, and the organizational roles that such neurotechnologies may play.
The current state of therapeutic neuroprosthetic device use is presented, along with an overview of posthumanizing neuroprostheses and the types of enhanced capacities that they offer human workers that may be relevant to organizations. A range of factors incentivizing or discouraging the organizational deployment of posthumanizing neuroprostheses is identified and discussed. The organizational roles of therapeutic and posthumanizing neuroprostheses are then analyzed. Many organizations already unknowingly incorporate workers possessing therapeutic neuroprostheses, while two key paths for the organizational deployment of posthumanizing neuroprostheses are highlighted. First is the ‘transitional augmentation’ of human workers as a stopgap measure on the path to eventual full automation of business processes through the use of AI. The second path involves retaining human workers in particular positions because exogenous factors (such as legal, ethical, or marketing requirements) mandate that human agents fill them, while augmenting the workers so that they can perform more competitively.
It is noted that military organizations play a key role among organizations likely to be early adopters of posthumanizing neuroprostheses. Known and hypothesized military programs for neuroprosthetic enhancement are discussed, along with characteristics of military organizations that remove obstacles that render the deployment of neuroprostheses impractical for most organizations. Other types of organizations are highlighted that share some traits as potential early adopters. Finally, enterprise architecture (EA) is discussed as a preferred management tool for many organizations that are likely to be early adopters; while EA does not directly address the serious ethical and legal questions raised by posthumanizing neuroprostheses, it can facilitate the functional aspects of integrating neuroprosthetically augmented workers into an organization’s personnel structures, business processes, and IT systems.
The incorporation of a neuroprosthetic device into one’s being at the physical, cognitive, and social levels constitutes a form of ‘cyborgization’ that imposes new constraints on one’s existence while simultaneously opening a path to new forms of experience. This text explores the boundaries of this qualitatively novel form of being by formulating an ontology of the neuroprosthesis as an instrument that shapes the way in which its human host experiences and acts within emerging posthumanized digital-physical ecosystems.
The ontology addresses four main roles that a neuroprosthetic device may play in this context. First, a neuroprosthesis may serve as a means of human augmentation by altering the cognitive and physical capacities possessed by its host. Second, it may manipulate the contents of information produced or utilized by its human host. Third, a neuroprosthesis may shape the manner in which its host inhabits a digital-physical body and external environment. And finally, a neuroprosthesis may regulate the autonomous agency possessed and experienced by its host.
The development and use of such an ontology can allow researchers to better understand the psychological, social, and ethical ramifications of such technologies and can enable the architects of neuroprosthetic systems and the digital-physical ecosystems within which their human hosts operate to formulate principles of design and management that minimize the dangers and maximize benefits for the neuroprosthetically augmented inhabitants of such environments.
In this text, we develop an ontology that envisions, captures, and describes the full range of ways in which a neuroprosthesis may participate in the sensory, cognitive, and motor processes of its human host. By considering anticipated future developments in neuroprosthetics and adopting a generic biocybernetic approach, the ontology is able to account for therapeutic neuroprostheses already in use as well as future types of neuroprostheses expected to be deployed for purposes of human enhancement.
The ontology encompasses three areas. First, a neuroprosthesis may participate in its host’s processes of sensation by (a) detecting stimuli such as photons, sound waves, or chemicals; (b) fabricating sense data, as in the case of virtual reality systems; (c) storing sense data; (d) transmitting sense data within a neural pathway; (e) enabling its host to experience sense data through a sensory modality such as vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, balance, heat, or pain; or (f) creating mappings of sensory routes – e.g., in order to allow sensory substitution. Second, a neuroprosthesis may participate in processes of cognition by (a) creating a basic interface between the device and the host’s conscious awareness or affecting the host’s (b) perception, (c) creativity, (d) memory and identity, or (e) reasoning and decision-making. Third, a neuroprosthesis may participate in processes of motion by (a) detecting motor instructions generated by the host’s brain; (b) fabricating motor instructions, as in the case of a medical device controlled by software algorithms rather than its host’s volitions; (c) storing motor instructions; (d) transmitting motor instructions, as within a neural pathway; (e) effectuating physical action within effectors such as natural biological muscles and glands, synthetic muscles, robotic actuators, video screens, audio speakers, or wireless transmitters; (f) allowing the expression of volitions through motor modalities such as language, paralanguage, and locomotion; or (g) creating mappings of motor routes. The use of such an ontology allows easier, more systematic, and more robust analysis of the biocybernetic role of a neuroprosthesis within its host-device system.
The structure and behavior of a neuroprosthetic device can be analyzed from different perspectives. In this text, we formulate an ontology that can be employed to describe the fundamental characteristics of a neuroprosthesis in its role as a computing device. The ontology draws on existing neuroprosthetic device typologies and ontologies developed for other kinds of devices such as mobile devices and robotic systems. It describes four key aspects that shape the functioning of a neuroprosthesis as computing device: 1) the device’s external context (including the human agents who participate in its development and use, factors impacting the device’s availability, and the device’s relationship to the body of its human host); 2) physical components of the neuroprosthesis (including the device’s basic morphology, input and output mechanisms, and computational substrate); 3) processes utilized by the device (including computational processes and input and output modalities); and 4) the types of information generated or handled by the device (which may include data regarding the device’s status and environment, data regarding the cognitive and biological processes of the device’s human host, and procedural and declarative knowledge). The use of such an ontology allows the functionality of a neuroprosthesis as a computing device to be more easily analyzed or designed and facilitates interoperability between neuroprostheses, their human hosts and users, and external computer systems.
For many employees, ‘work’ is no longer something performed while sitting at a computer in an office. Employees in a growing number of industries are expected to carry mobile devices and be available for work-related interactions even when beyond the workplace and outside of normal business hours. In this article it is argued that a future step will increasingly be to move work-related information and communication technology (ICT) inside the human body through the use of neuroprosthetics, to create employees who are always ‘online’ and connected to their workplace’s digital ecosystems. At present, neural implants are used primarily to restore abilities lost through injury or illness, however their use for augmentative purposes is expected to grow, resulting in populations of human beings who possess technologically altered capacities for perception, memory, imagination, and the manipulation of physical environments and virtual cyberspace. Such workers may exchange thoughts and share knowledge within posthuman cybernetic networks that are inaccessible to unaugmented human beings.
Scholars note that despite their potential benefits, such neuroprosthetic devices may create numerous problems for their users, including a sense of alienation, the threat of computer viruses and hacking, financial burdens, and legal questions surrounding ownership of intellectual property produced while using such implants. Moreover, different populations of human beings may eventually come to occupy irreconcilable digital ecosystems as some persons embrace neuroprosthetic technology, others feel coerced into augmenting their brains to compete within the economy, others might reject such technology, and still others will simply be unable to afford it.
In this text we propose a model for analyzing how particular neuroprosthetic devices will either facilitate human beings’ participation in new forms of socioeconomic interaction and digital workplace ecosystems – or undermine their mental and physical health, privacy, autonomy, and authenticity. We then show how such a model can be used to create device ontologies and typologies that help us classify and understand different kinds of advanced neuroprosthetic devices according to the impact that they will have on individual human beings.
How does one ensure information security for a computer that is entangled with the structures and processes of a human brain – and for the human mind that is interconnected with such a device?
The need to provide information security for neuroprosthetic devices grows more pressing as increasing numbers of people utilize therapeutic technologies such as cochlear implants, retinal prostheses, robotic prosthetic limbs, and deep brain stimulation devices. Moreover, emerging neuroprosthetic technologies for human enhancement are expected to increasingly transform their human users’ sensory, motor, and cognitive capacities in ways that generate new ‘posthumanized’ sociotechnological realities. In this context, it is essential not only to ensure the information security of such neuroprostheses themselves but – more importantly – to ensure the psychological and physical health, autonomy, and personal identity of the human beings whose cognitive processes are inextricably linked with such devices. InfoSec practitioners must not only guard against threats to the confidentiality and integrity of data stored within a neuroprosthetic device’s internal memory; they must also guard against threats to the confidentiality and integrity of thoughts, memories, and desires existing within the mind the of the device’s human host.
This second edition of The Handbook of Information Security for Advanced Neuroprosthetics updates the previous edition’s comprehensive investigation of these issues from both theoretical and practical perspectives. It provides an introduction to the current state of neuroprosthetics and expected future trends in the field, along with an introduction to fundamental principles of information security and an analysis of how they must be re-envisioned to address the unique challenges posed by advanced neuroprosthetics. A two-dimensional cognitional security framework is presented whose security goals are designed to protect a device’s human host in his or her roles as a sapient metavolitional agent, embodied embedded organism, and social and economic actor. Practical consideration is given to information security responsibilities and roles within an organizational context and to the application of preventive, detective, and corrective or compensating security controls to neuroprosthetic devices, their host-device systems, and the larger supersystems in which they operate. Finally, it is shown that while implantable neuroprostheses create new kinds of security vulnerabilities and risks, they may also serve to enhance the information security of some types of human hosts (such as those experiencing certain neurological conditions).
Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) hold promise to treat neurological disabilities by linking intact brain circuitry to assistive devices, such as limb prostheses, wheelchairs, artificial sensors, and computers. BMIs have experienced very rapid development in recent years, facilitated by advances in neural recordings, computer technologies and robots. BMIs are commonly classified into three types: sensory, motor and bidirectional, which subserve motor, sensory and sensorimotor functions, respectively. Additionally, cognitive BMIs have emerged in the domain of higher brain functions. BMIs are also classified as noninvasive or invasive according to the degree of their interference with the biological tissue. Although noninvasive BMIs are safe and easy to implement, their information bandwidth is limited. Invasive BMIs hold promise to improve the bandwidth by utilizing multichannel recordings from ensembles of brain neurons. BMIs have a broad range of clinical goals, as well as the goal to enhance normal brain functions.
Human ICT implants such as cochlear implants and cardiac pacemakers have been in common clinical use for many years, forming intimate links between technology and the body. Such medical devices have become increasingly advanced in their functionality, with some able to modify behaviour by directly interacting with the human brain and others coming closer to restoring functionality which outperforms its natural counterpart. More recently, and somewhat more controversially, low-tech human ICT implants have been increasingly employed in healthy people, in non-therapeutic contexts. Applications typically focus on identification such as VIP entry into nightclubs, automated payments and controlling access to secure facilities. While reviewing the state of the art, this chapter makes the case that with the desire of technology enthusiasts and self-experimenters to push boundaries, increasing familiarity driving cultural and societal changes, advances in medical technology and the inevitable drift of medical technology to non-medical application, this is clearly just the beginning for human enhancement using ICT implants.
While considered by many to be within the realm of science fiction, for several decades information and communication technology (ICT) has been implanted into the human body. Advanced medical devices such as cochlear implants and deep brain stimulators are commonplace and research into new ways to invasively interface with the human body are opening up new application areas such as retinal implants and sensate prosthetics. It is apparent that as these implantable medical technologies continue to advance their potential for human enhancement, i.e. enabling abilities over and above those which humans normally possess, will become increasingly attractive. In the first instance, this may be giving a person with a deficient sense a device that enables them to function on a vastly superior level. However, it is clear that healthy people will look to implantable technology to augment what we would consider their ‘normal’ abilities. Technology enthusiasts have already begun to realise the potential of simple implantable technologies, with people opting to have passive silicon devices surgically implanted to facilitate identification. It is equally foreseeable that the application of implantable technology, developed initially in a medical context, will be repurposed to augment the abilities of healthy humans. Such developments are beginning to redefine our relationship with technology. The changes are not just technological—they are driving changes in cultural and social paradigms, and further empowering people to seek new experiences and employ new services. It is evident that we need to address the incipient technical, legal, ethical and social issues that the development of human ICT implant devices may bring. This chapter gives an overview of the landscape of issues surrounding human ICT implants, and explains how the following chapters in this book serve to address these key areas in more depth.
The concept of an interface between brain and the external world, i.e., connecting a brain to a machine or a computer, is not new and often has been the subject of popular science fiction. As early as the 1950s, electrodes were regularly implanted into the brains of humans or animals for electrical recording or stimulation [1] to influence brain function or treat neurological disorders [2,3]. For many decades, neurophysiologists have also been recording neural electrical potentials and stimulating through similar types of acutely and chronically implanted electrodes, as tools for understanding brain function. However, the specific goal of interfacing brain directly to devices, bypassing normal routes to the muscles, has recently experienced a resurgence in popularity and received renewed interest as seen in both research publications and in the popular media. Such rise in interest may be due to the recent advances in neuroscience as well as rapid developments in computers and electronics, as predicted by Moore in 1965 [4,5], allowing large amounts of information to be processed and converted into neurally-derived control signals in real-time. The concept of transforming thought into action and sensation into perception for those lacking normal pathways is now becoming feasible.
Ever since the dawn of mankind, we have used artefacts to extend our physical abilities or to overcome our bodily shortcomings. We use a stick to reach the apples on the highest branch of a tree, or a lever to lift things that are heavier than our own bodies. And we use microscopes and telescopes to see things beyond the natural range of our visual system. Several twentiethcentury philosophers have pointed out that when humans use artefacts and technologies, these often tend to become extensions of their bodies: they become incorporated into the user’s body schema. Most of us can flawlessly park a car or write with a pen because of this principle. Technologies, although ‘other’, can become ‘part’ of a user’s bodily repertoire, even if they are not embedded into the human body. At the same time, it is interesting to note that in some cases technologies can be experienced as ‘alien’, or that they can even lead users to feel ‘alienated’ from themselves. The former may happen when we are new at using a technology, or when it malfunctions or breaks down. The latter has been shown to occur, for example, in patients who undergo Deep Brain Stimulation. After treatment, these patients sometimes state that they feel estranged from themselves, that they no longer feel they are the same person. In this chapter we use some of the central ideas from philosophy of technology to clarify these two (seemingly contradictory) perspectives.
In a number of popular video games, the player character’s (originally human) body undergoes a temporary or permanent transformation to take on a radically different physical form, such as that of an animal, mythical creature, machine, or cloud of energy. In fantasy games, such a transformation might be caused by a magical spell, ability, or item; in science fiction games, the character’s body might be transformed through cybernetic augmentation, mind uploading, or ‘jacking in’ to experience cyberspace through a virtual avatar. In the real world, researchers have found that the human brain utilizes a ‘body schema’ to control the body and interpret sense data received through it, and that the brain displays a significant ability to update its body schema to reflect bodily changes resulting from growth, illness, injury, or the addition of prosthetic devices. However, it is unknown how dramatically a human body can be transformed before the brain loses its ability to communicate with and control it. This question of whether the human mind can interact with the world without the use of a human body has occupied philosophers from the times of Aquinas and Descartes through the present day. Here we argue that video games can play a crucial role in aiding us to solve this mystery – and thus in ascertaining the extent to which the reengineering of the form and function of the human body envisioned by many transhumanist and posthumanist thinkers may or may not be possible.
We begin by suggesting that differences in how body transformation is depicted in fantasy versus science fiction games reveal game designers’ implicit insights into the limits of our brain’s ability to adapt to a changed body. We then argue that the sensorimotor feedback loop experienced while playing video games – which is not present in other media such as books or films – creates a unique opportunity to explore how greatly the human brain’s body schema can be extended or transformed to accommodate the possession of a radically non-human body. In this fashion, the designers and players of computer gamers are working at the frontiers of an emerging field of ‘body schema engineering.’ Their experiences will aid humanity to understand the extent to which it may or may not be possible to develop posthuman technologies such as xenosomatic prosthetics (which provide a human mind with the experience of possessing a body radically different from its natural human body), neosomatic prosthetics (which physically replace all of a person’s body apart from the brain with a synthetic housing that may or may not resemble a human body), and moioprosthetics (specialized neosomatic prosthetics that encase the human brain within a standardized ‘cyberbrain’ that can be easily swapped among different robotic ‘cybershells’ in the form of humanoid or animal bodies, vehicles, or buildings). Finally, we suggest that reflecting on computer gamers’ in-game experiences of possessing and utilizing non-human bodies can help us to anticipate and understand the novel psychological conditions – whether disorders or enhancements – that may result from the long-term use of body-altering neuroprosthetics. Through their exploitation of video games’ body-transforming capabilities, gamers can become pioneers and heralds of new posthuman ways of existing and interacting with reality.
The preceding chapters describe BCI applications that restore motor or communication functions of the brain to patients paralyzed by spinal cord injuries or muscular dystrophies. These BCIs extract electrophysiological signals from healthy motor cortices and process them into control commands for computers, robotic machines, or communication devices. The brain can suffer damage directly, however, from genetic disorders or injuries from stroke or disease. Damage to the brain can lead to numerous cognitive impairments, such as memory loss, mood or personality alterations, and even behavioral changes that include motor or communication dysfunction. This chapter presents some of the developments of neuroprostheses that aim to address such cognitive or emotional dysfunction.
Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) is the controlled application of electrical current to the peripheral nerves for the purpose of generating useful muscle contractions in people with nervous system dysfunction. Over the last several decades, many different applications of FES technology have been developed (Figure 6.1), and these can be divided into two main categories. The first category includes those systems that save lives by restoring essential autonomic functions. Probably the most well-known and widespread example of commercial FES technology is the cardiac pacemakers used to reliably activate heart muscles in people with damage to the neural circuitry of the heart. Other commercial technologies, such as the Vocare® system, are used to restore bladder function after spinal cord injury. FES diaphragm-pacing systems have the potential to eliminate need for a ventilator in severely paralyzed individuals. Also, methods to stimulate nerves that coordinate breathing and swallowing reflex pathways are being developed to treat sleep apnea or to facilitate swallowing after stroke.