Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jan 25, 2026

Training Persons with Spinal Cord Injury to Ambulate Using a Powered Exoskeleton
Published on: June 16, 2016
Attempted Arm and Hand Movements can be Decoded from Low-Frequency EEG from Persons with Spinal Cord Injury
Patrick Ofner1, Andreas Schwarz1, Joana Pereira1
1Graz University of Technology, Institute of Neural Engineering, BCI-Lab, Graz, Austria.
Abstract:
We show that persons with spinal cord injury (SCI) retain decodable neural correlates of attempted arm and hand movements. We investigated hand open, palmar grasp, lateral grasp, pronation, and supination in 10 persons with cervical SCI. Discriminative movement information was provided by the time-domain of low-frequency electroencephalography (EEG) signals. Based on these signals, we obtained a maximum average classification accuracy of 45% (chance level was 20%) with respect to the five investigated classes. Pattern analysis indicates central motor areas as the origin of the discriminative signals. Furthermore, we introduce a proof-of-concept to classify movement attempts online in a closed loop, and tested it on a person with cervical SCI. We achieved here a modest classification performance of 68.4% with respect to palmar grasp vs hand open (chance level 50%).
Related Concept Videos
Spinal Cord
The Spinal Cord
Spinal Cord: Information Processing
Sensory Information Processing
Sensory information processing begins at the sensory receptors located in the skin and other tissues, which detect somatic sensory stimuli such as touch, temperature, or pain. These receptors function as catalysts, initiating...
Spinal Cord: Gross Anatomy
Spinal Cord: Cross-sectional Anatomy
Gray Matter and its Components
Central to the gray matter is...
Frequency-dependent Selection

