Brown University professor John Donoghue wins Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering

Greg Hirth, Brown's vice president for research, applauded the award both as a recognition of Donoghue's work and as a validation of collaborative research.

"This is such a well-deserved honor for Professor Donoghue, after decades of groundbreaking research," Hirth said. "The accomplishments of the BrainGate collaboration demonstrate what can be achieved when researchers from varied backgrounds come together around a common goal."

Turning thoughts into action

Donoghue joined the Brown faculty in 1984 and has worked in the development of BCIs for more than three decades. In a groundbreaking 2006 study, Donoghue's team showed that the tiny BrainGate electrode array, surgically placed on the brain's motor cortex, could detect neural signals associated with intentional movement and use those signals to control external devices. In the study, a 26-year-old trial participant was able to move a cursor on a screen and even play the video game Pong just by thinking about the actions involved.

Those early findings were critical, Donoghue says, partly because they demonstrated that neural activity in the motor cortex persists even long after spinal cord injury, stroke or neurological illnesses like ALS have robbed people of their ability to move.

"At the time, we didn't know whether a paralyzed person would have any brain activity at all associated with movement," Donoghue said. "There were people who thought maybe that whole area of the brain just shuts down. We showed that there was not only activity, but a lot of it. The question then became: What can we do with it?"

In landmark research from 2012, a clinical trial participant named Cathy Hutchinson used the BrainGate BCI to control a robotic arm, grasping and lifting a water bottle to her mouth and taking a drink. It was the first definitive demonstration of goal-directed robotic reach and grasp using a brain-computer interface.

Progress has continued from those initial steps. The BrainGate team has since shown that the system can enable people with paralysis to use their own limbs, type text from thought on a screen and speak with the help of a large language model. The team has also demonstrated the long-term safety of the device and continued to develop its capabilities, steadily improving its calibration speed and accuracy and successfully demonstrating a fully wireless version that will allow full-time home use.

Donoghue said he's especially grateful to all the clinical trial participants the BrainGate team has worked with over the years, who made selfless contributions to enable BCI development. He also credited Brown for creating an atmosphere where this research could thrive.

"Our success emerged from Brown's extraordinary interdisciplinary culture where experts from different fields interact regularly," Donoghue said. "And our students have also made many important contributions. This collective effort made our work possible."

Donoghue says he's gratified that the BrainGate collaboration, now led by Brown professor of engineering and brain science Leigh Hochberg, continues to make impressive advances, and that research teams at other universities and companies are advancing BCI technology for everyday use.

"When we began, we wanted to help people with paralysis do anything they wanted - play the piano, type, play basketball or speak again" he said. "These are ambitious goals and there is still considerable work to be done, but they are increasingly within reach."

Donoghue is a fellow of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. His honors include the International Prize for Translational Neuroscience, the Israel Brain Prize and the Erwin Schrödinger Prize. He served on President Barack Obama's National Institutes of Health BRAIN Initiative advisory committee, was a co-founder of the pioneering neurotechnology company Cyberkinetics, and currently serves in advisory and board roles for neurotechnology companies and for the National Institutes of Health.

Other winners of this year's Queen Elizabeth prize are Graeme Clark, Erwin Hochmair, Ingeborg Hochmair and Blake Wilson, who were honored for cochlear implants; Alim Benabid and Pierre Pollak for deep brain stimulation; and Jocelyne Bloch and Grégoire Courtine for electronic spinal stimulation. Past winners include AI innovators Yann LeCun and Jensen Huang, World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and the pioneering engineers responsible for the Global Positioning System.