PBL - 10

I finally managed to upload the slides yesterday nite.

Prof Yu came late today as usual. He was more communicative today compared to the previous two sessions, gave a lot of feedback, lot of learning issues and praised other groups for their effort. He told us to buck up, refine our presentations, and do a lot of homework.

Others liked my introduction, Ludovic gave me some suggestions. I guess Ni Jun was the scapegoat for the meeting. He got lot of learning issues. Although he does his homework well, he cannot articulate it, that's where he loses out.

Overall suggestion for the group was to know our work thorougly well, and not put anything on the slides we don't understand.

After the meeting, Yixiang asked me if he can join Ni Jun and myself to work on the arm physiology part as his BCI part is almost done. Even Ludovic suggested that we work more on this part as Ni Jun is finding it difficult to manage it alone.

Now that all PBL meetings with Prof Yu are over, we have to prepare for the final presentation on 4th Nov or 28th Oct.

We have to start working on PBL2, it's about heart valves, hope it is fun as well.

Good nite, sweet dreams, happy blogging.

PBL - 09

Wow, i am blogging after more than 10 days.

Let me recall what i did over the past 10 days
1. Met Dr Mohan (from Surgery) to ask about the arm physiology. He was kind enuf to explain in nutshell about the flexor and extensor muscles, their correspoding nerves, and how they coordinate. Ni Jun was also present in this meeting.
2. Met Dr Sanjiv (Stroke specialist, NUH), he explained everything ranging from how paralysis starts, different kind of plegia, what happens in brain, spinal cord, what physiology is affected due to paralysis,...He was willing to give a ppt to the whole group (after i requested). But unfortuntely, he is going home from Deepavali, so have to wait till he comes back.
3. Spent a few hours daily in med library searching for relevant info on upper limb physiology.
4. Met the group on friday (23rd)to update each other, and decide on how to present for the 3rd meeting with Prof Yu. Everone recommended me to give the introduction. So i guess i will introduce the system, need for the system, and current technology in the market; Also i think will give an overview of the different components of the system. I have to do the conclusion as well.


Today, i meet Lei Yang in the canteen, discussed about PBL. We came up with a name for our system - ImagineMove. I would credit both Lei Yang and myself for this name. Hope others like it.

I am yet to finalize my slides for the wednesday meeting. Tonite is the submission deadline. Oh boy, this PBL is taking too much of my time, have a paper to submit for the conference, have no idea how i am gonna manage time.

PBL - 08

Met Ni Jun before the meeting to find out what he did overnite. Seems he managed to read up on the basics on mucle and nerve physiology. Complements well with my work.

Had an eventful second meeting with Prof Hanry, got a lot of learning issues. Ni Jun and myself are supposed to find out about the muscle and nerve physiology involved in grasping function (all 5 digits if possible. I think we narrowed down the problem definition to using BCI to control a neuroprosthetic arm to enable hand grasping function in the patient. Yixiang titled the problem as BCI controlled artificial limb.

After the meeting, had a little chat with Prof Yu on what actually PBL is, how the group is coping with the different kind of teamtask, what my opinions are about PBL,...Oh yeah, we also talked about GPBE, GSC and the new regime changes and stuff.

PBL - 07

Had meeting with the group in CRC level 3 Kitchenette (the BN5104 lecture got cancelled). Ni Jun and Yixiang seemed to have overlooked the last meeting minutes, prepared on retinal implants, wanted the group to work on that. Rest of the group disagreed, had a debate, finally decided to work on BCI controlled neuroprosthetic arm.

Group thought of 4 sections for the neuroprosthetic device. I chose to learn about the physiology of the arm, what goes wrong in the arm of a paralytic patient, and how different muscles and nerves coordinate in the arm. Surprisingly, Ni Jun wanted to join me for this part.

Went to the library in the evening, borrowed the Martini book, and got bewildered by the medical jargon. Somehow managed to find that there are 4 major nerves in the hand, innervating more than 20 muscles. I guess i will just share this with others tomorrow in the meeting. Wonder what Ni Jun did.

Met Lei Yang in her lab in after 2000+. She showed me some lecture notes of JHU on spine motor system. She thinks it would be useful to her to explain how her freehand works. I asked her to upload the document into the IVLE community workbin. Later, she confided in me that she doesn't like PBL very much, as it is consuming her time from research. I could empathise with her.

Am too tired now, want to write a lot. Adios for now.

PBL - 06

Went to Alberto's lab to check out his group's progree.
Alberto was kind enuf to share some of his papers.
Two of the papers struck me very much - one was about Graz group's work on neuroprosthesis controlled by a BCI and the other was about a 5 year old commercial neuroprosthesis arm. I borrowed the two papers from him, uploaded in the IVLE, mailed the rest of the group to have a look at the papers.

PBL - 05

Meeting with Prof Hanry started on time as we happened to meet him in the elevator. After a few minutes of battle with his iMac, we finally got started. After Lei Yang's overall introduction to MMIs, Hanry advised us to come up with a problem before the end of the meeting. I am not sure about others, but i got a bit nervous as we had not thought of a problem to work on. Olivier showed us a video on Graz's BCI research. Surprisingly, Hanry stayed silent during the presentations so far, without asking any questions. "may be this is how a PBL session is conducted, where the tutor doesn't ask questions" During Zhan Liang's presentation, an interesting question fueled the first discussion of the day. None of us were clear whether the EEG signal is obtained prior to the activity or during the activity. So, Hanry suggested the query to be the learning issue for the week. I don't know if Hanry knew the answer, but he asked us to find it out ourselves. "I guess in PBL, the tutor's role is to facilitate discussions, and not to provide answers" I wrapped up the BCI portion of the MMI sharing with others what Singapore and Germany have achieved so far in the BCI field. Hanry still refrained from asking questions. Ludovic introduced NPs to us. He explained to us how Deep Brain Simulator works - It doesn't cure Parkinson's disease but rather just prevents it; DBS uses Titanium invasive electrodes and gold wires; DBS has a 70% success rate. It was followed by Ni Jun's presentation on the two types of retinal implants. Yi Xiang elucidated on his findings on cochlear implants, thus completing our group's introductory presentations on MMIs.

We were left with only 10 minutes to go before we could start discussing about the problem/issue. I initiated the proceedings suggesting that we may work on developing a thought controlled neuroprosthetic device that can help the quadriplegic patients to walk. I proposed this problem because the group has people who have had background in BCI before. So, by tapping into their skills it would be easier to come up with a novel solution to the problem in hand. Zhan Liang seconded my idea. Ludovic proposed on working on an NP that can boost memory. Olivier wanted to develop an NP that can cure Alzheimer's diease. Yi Xiang suggested we should work on a device that can stimulate the muscle activity directly (something like the one shown in the movie Matrix). Hanry chipped into our discussion, saying that suppose 7 of us form a company and want to work on a project funded by Bill Gates. Then which project would we choose? It doesn't necessarily have to be revolutionary and novel, even a cocktail can make an impact if properly designed. So after a bit of deliberation (lasting few minutes if i am not wrong), we all decided to work on a BCI controlled neuroprosthetic arm. Everyone decided to search on this topic and update others on their findings.

Thus our first session with Hanry came to an end. But as usual i was not satisfied with the outcome of the meeting. We should have spent more time to come up with a problem, discuss about the loopholes in the current knowledge/applications, areas of improvement, issues in the relevant areas, etc... What if someone has already come up with such a BCI controlled limb device? What can we do then? Improve upon it? or Give up the idea and choose something else. I think we should have discussed all this. Anyway, we have a topic atleast to work on. Let us see how it shapes up.

PBL - 04

Past two days have been really busy. I spent the whole of monday afternoon and evening mentally and physically preparing the ppt for tuesday's meeting. As my research work was to focus on Singapore and Germany, i thought i would be able to make my slides in a jiffy. But i guess jiffy meant more than 6hrs for me. I did not know that i2r has achieved so much in so little time. It was hard to dig up their relavent articles written for general audience. Their technical stuff is way beyond my engineering background. So i stuck up to the basics. Regarding Germany, the Tubingen group has achieved tremendous success with their Thought Translation Device. Then why do they have very few articles in English to boast about their success? Beats me. I literally had to scorch for information in the web to prepare slides on the TTD. After some hard search, I retired for the day without completing my slides. The next day, i was preparing the rest of the slides (the Muller's group mainly) while i was doing my TA duties. Thank God, the students were not asking too many questions in the practical.

The meeting started with a few setbacks. We had to switch rooms midway during Lei Yang's introductory presentation. The Swiss duo wanted to leave early (1700hrs) and so were Lei Yang and Zhang Lei (meeting and lecture). So, we had to hasten our presentations. Yixiang was visibly upset at this, but he managed to control his temper durng the meeting. Lei Yang took the initiative to come up with introductory slides (i don't remembering anyone volunteering to prepare the introductory slides in the last meeting). Olivier also prepared some slides, but he was more technical compared to Lei Yang. So, all of us decided that Lei Yang is more suitable to be the first speaker. Olivier was more obscure in his presentation, skimming thru' most of the slides. He failed to present indepth information about the BCI research in Cananda and Europe. He just gave a bird's eye view of the info. I couldn't make out anything of what Zhan Liang presented about U Michi's research work except for the fact that they were using invasive electrodes to obtain ECoG and not EEG to control their BCI.Ludovic was not ready with his final slides yet, so his presentation seemed no better. After the duo left, Ni Jun gave a patchy presentation (although his slides indicated lot of effort put in by him) about the retinal implants. Lei Yang also seemed lost. Funny incident, Lei Yang SMSes me from across the room asking whether i can follow Ni Jun's presentation. She could have asked Ni Jun to stop and explain properly. But neither she did nor me. Is it an indication that "The group is not working as a team." Then i talked about my stuff for more than 20 mts. Later Yixiang suggested that i can reduce the length of my presentation as the slides were comprehensive enough. Yixiang went last(only Ni Jun and myself were in the audience), gave a lot of info on Cochlear implants. Later on, over dinner Yixiang expressed his upset about the Swiss duo's attitude towards the project and the meeting. He said that as they did not do their own work properly, they should not complain about other's work. "Do i see ripples in the group? Such upset demons are not good for a working group." I calmed him down saying that they may not be used to the way Asian's work. We have to adapt to work with others so as to build a cohesive and effective team, and not allow such minor incidents to affect the team's work. It is also my first time to work with non-Asians on a school project. I hope we can work together.

Later in the evening, I came to know that Zhan Liang took the initiative to set up an IVLE community group. I am really glad that my group members are showing active interest to work on the project. So, does it indicate that we can work as a team and not just a group?

Reflections from the past two days -
(a) As i took the initiative to be the group facilitator, is it my responsibility to make sure no ripples arise among the group members? If we can't work as a team, the whole point of working in groups for the PBL is diluted.
(b) Can i do something to improve the presentation skills of some of my group members?
(c) We never got to the point of discussing on the shortcomings of the current research work, problems coming out of it, probable solutions to the issues...Waht are we going to tell Prof Yu? We did not come up with any problem. Why did it happen? Was no one interested to discuss? Was there a time mis-management? How could we have avoided this? Should we have followed a different approach to present our findings to save time?

Tomorrow is the group's first meeting with Prof Yu. I seem overly concerned about the meeting. Let's see what happens tomorrow? Till then, happy blogging!

PBL - 03

The past 2 days, post-exams, were spent on finding more about MMIs. I asked Zhang Xin, Vinayak and Alberto about what their groups are doing regarding the problem. Zhang Xin said that not much progress has been done in her group, although they also decided to divide the group into BCI and NP respectively to manage things easily. Vinayak did not elaborate on his group's updates. Wonder what's so secretive? Alberto elucidated a lot about his group findings. As the problem statement expects us to come up with a novel NP device at the end of the day, Alberto said that about 6 people in his group are researching on different NP devices - liver, kidney, eye, ear, ...His approach to NP is that the NP devices act as substitute for the actual nerves. When the nerves no longer function to handle an organ, the NP devices simulate that function. They might not necessarily direct the nerves to activate. They can actually work for the neurons. Alberto is focusing on BCI though.

Today, i searched PubMed to retrieve articles on the latest work in the BCI area. A paper in Stroke journal has a small review on the latest BMIs and BCIs. I have to read that one. Also, i borrowed some books and journal articles from the library to know more about PBL. Wish to read up on PBL over the weekend. I might start working on the ppt on monday.