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Subdermal Resonant Circuits and Permanent Magnet Assembly for Muscle Memory Training
Hey guys! I have been kicking around an idea for a while now, and I want some feedback. I will hopefully upload a drawing later today to illustrate the concept further. Essentially, I want to make a small implant assembly that can read muscular impulses and create muscular impulses.
The idea is this:
Let us say that I want to learn how to do a tornado kick or draw a perfect circle, or I want to correct the way that I walk or learn a new dance. I would attach an electrode on my skin over the subdermal assembly (using the permanent magnets (one in the subdermal assembly and one in the electrode above the skin)) connected to muscle groups that I will be using to perform this task, and set an external device "the device" (raspberry pi?) to record the electrical impulses from my muscle movements as I perform the task slowly. After I perform it correctly, and narrow the recording to the signals I want, I set "the device" to play back the signal to the muscle groups in sequence at increasing speed until it is at full speed. The signal is repeated constantly until the set of muscle movements are locked in the brain as muscle memory. The idea is that this could greatly reduce the time to learn a new physical activity.
The Subdermal Assembly Includes:
Resonant Circuit A (RCA): Resonant circuit at x hz powers transistor or relay to close RCB. This is a safety circuit to prevent electromagnetic interference from disabling the user when the device is not in use.
Resonant Circuit B (RCB): Resonant circuit at y hz sends and receives signal between the device and muscle. It contains a gold wire electrode mesh on the bottom of the assembly that touches the muscle. To record information from the muscle, a VERY small voltage is applied to RCB so that it is in resonance with the external electrode. When the RCB picks up the muscular impulse from its gold wires on the muscle it transmits that impulse to the device. Much like striking a tuning fork. I say gold mesh because that was the first thing to come to mind. Maybe some other material would work better and be cheaper?
Permanent magnet: This sits in the center of the assembly and antenna coils from RCA and RCB. Its primary purpose is to easily locate the subdermal assembly under the skin and to keep the external electrode close to it by gently drawing the two together. The electrode will still need some adhesive to keep it in place but this will greatly speed up locating the implant without having to mark the skin above. This magnet also acts as minor shielding for the resonant coils by reducing some of the background noise because of the strong local field.
Assembly Housing: This would either be silicone or medical grade epoxy. After all the pieces are in place, the whole assembly would be inserted into a mold to seal it, save for the electrode mesh on the bottom.
External Electrode Assembly:
This would include two resonant circuits operating at x and y hz, and a central permanent magnet. Also there would be circuitry to transmit the signal to and from "the device" itself.
I would like to hear your opinions on this. If this was discussed in an earlier post please let me know because I clearly missed it haha. I am good at soldering and I know a fair amount about electronics but it is not my specialty. I am not so worried about the actual implanting of multiple devices like this, but more on the concept itself. It is not that I do not want to hear of potential ways of implanting if you can think of them but I do not want that to be the main topic. Also, if you agree with the way I discussed or if you do not let me know. I know it would be a pretty invasive way to not have to practice, but hey! life is short. ;)
Comments
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This is a little information on resonant inductive coupling. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonantinductivecoupling
I am still going to post a drawing. I have been busy and have not had time to draw it up. These circuits are a neat way to power devices from a significant distance away. -
electronics doesn't exactly work like you imagined it here. You can't just apply voltages and pick up muscle impulses and send them along. EMG requires a proper analog amplifier, ADC, reference electrodes, a proper way of communication (like bluetooth or at least frequency modulation of some signal on a coil if you go low-end). Then the entire thing needs to have its own power supply.
All that aside, motions aren't the result of muscles alone. Motions require muscles, your brain and a number of sensory inputs in order to work properly. Doing a motion at slow speeds yields entirely different parameters than doing them at high speed.While similar non-implantable devices were build by enthusiasts in the past they only worked in a small number of special applications.
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@ThomasEgi Thanks for the comment!
I found a video that is doing something similar (possibly one of the enthusiasts you mentioned) to what I am talking about. The hardware that makes contact with the users skin is minimal. However, the speaker does mention that the nerve he is looking for is near the surface of the skin. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQNi5sAwucI read up a little on Electromyography. It might not be necessary for this to work. That being said an implant may not be necessary either (as you stated too). The main reason I wanted to do an implant was for reusability of the external electrode, and to have it always in the same spot. Perhaps installing subdermal magnets would be enough for that as well.
Electronics are not my strength and I have done all of my work by finding things that do something similar to what I want and then modifying them and hooking them together. I was not thinking about the signal differences of doing a motion slow vs fast. You are right in saying that it would be different. In quick motions your body relies on momentum and only has to activate a small group of muscles vs moving slowly and activating many stabilizers to cover that same motion.
As far as a power supply, the idea was for it to be powered wirelessly through the skin using one of the coils. Let us take the recording aspect of the idea out for now. That would take more gear and I need to read up on that more. Bluetooth is a good idea, or maybe it would be possible to use the muscle impulse to power an RFID chip that pings a receiver, I do not know. Playing a signal through to the muscle would not be that difficult. Correct me if I am wrong, but it would basically be an induction charging circuit for a smartphone and those are paper thin. Making one to run at a higher voltage and very low amperage while keeping it compact enough to insert could be a challenge. Perhaps a copper foil could be laminated to a silicone backing, etched to create the coil, components are added, and then fully enclosed in silicone? Modulating the power to the implant could be done externally by increasing/lowering the wattage. It is a crude way of doing it but I think it could work.
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you could theoretically use phone chargers, but they are made for high power and not exactly designed to be safe enough in operation to depend your health on it. Stimulating muscles is indeed a lot easier than reading signals from it. Powering something from the tiny signal your muscles generate is pretty much out of question. When reading signal you also have to get rid of as much noise as possible, so you certainly want to run on battery. Inductive charging, bluetooth etc, all those are like a carpet-bombing your circuit with noise you'd have to protect against. So the prefered method would be temporarily deactivate all coms, read your signal , enable coms afterwards and send it out.
As for implanted electrode material , platinum-iridium would be my first choice. If you'r on a budget medical grade stainless probably works okay short to mid-term.
