Glossary

Technologies that provide ways to interface the central or the peripheric nervous system to record their activity and/or induce activity through stimulation. They are typically used for rehabilitation purposes to compensate for lost functions following a trauma or a neurological disorder.

Non-invasive neurotechnologies allow to interface the brain from the outside of the head, while invasive neurotechnologies require the implantation of physical systems (e.g., electrodes) with a surgery.

Process to compensate for and/or restore lost functions of the body through a training process that help people with disabilities to regain, at least in part, their autonomy. Typically, such process is personalized to answer the specific need of a patient. For example, neurotechnologies aim to provide novel functional rehabilitation solutions when the nervous system has become deficient.

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) or Direct Neural Interface (DNI) is a communication channel between the brain and an external device such as a computer or an electronic device. The purpose of BCIs is to study the brain and to restore or compensate for lost functions, for instance in case of severe paralysis.

In the field of neurotechnologies, an open-loop paradigm is a setup where brain activity is recorded and processed to influence an external device. When the device provide a feedback to the subject (auditory, visual, tactile, naturaly or through neural stimulation...), the loop is said to be closed and the paradigm to be a closed-loop paradigm.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is a surgical procedure used to treat disabling symptoms of neurological disorders using electrodes implanted in deep structures of the brain and delivering electrical stimulations to these structures (e.g., the subthalamic nucleus in case of Parkinson's disease)

Electrocorticography (ECoG) is a technology that records electrical activity of the brain using electrodes positioned in direct contact with the cerebral cortex on surface of the brain. Standard ECoG electrodes used in clinics have diameters of a few mm. Current efforts attempt to develop dense arrays of microelectrodes on the µm scale. These devices are then called microECoG.