An overview of neural engineering

A comprehensive definition of Neural Engineering is presented from scientific, technological, clinical and end-user perspectives. Neural Engineering is the synergistic and highly interdisciplinary marriage of the neuroscience disciplines and those of engineering and computer science. It seeks to tap directly or indirectly into the nervous system to obtain sensory or command and control signals, to activate outgoing neural signals, and/or to influence processing within the central nervous system. Neural Engineering also seeks methods to restore lost or compromised neurological function. Neural Engineering is involved in designing, analyzing, and testing functional interfaces between neuroprosthetic systems and neurobiological systems. Neural Engineering also tests all of these components as systems, both in an engineering sense and in a physiological sense. Neural Engineering's design goals, achievable through rigorous in vitro, in vivo and clinical research, advance the understanding of sensorimotor neuroscience; and produce neural prostheses that are reliable, robust, safe, functionally transparent and cosmetically acceptable.