Background

Andrew Schwartz is a Distinguished Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and an adjunct faculty member in the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute. He works in the field of motor brain-computer interfaces, with decades of research focused on understanding how motor cortex activity can be translated into precise control of external devices. Schwartz has been instrumental in advancing practical BCIs from theoretical possibility to clinical reality.

Key Contributions

Schwartz led research teams that enabled people with severe paralysis to control anthropomorphic robotic arms using implanted electrode arrays. In a series of studies, his team demonstrated that a woman with longstanding quadriplegia could use a brain-computer interface to control a human-like robot arm with seven degrees of freedom, allowing her to move the arm, rotate and bend the wrist, and close the hand. This work represented a major advance in BCI technology, showing that it was possible to extract sufficiently precise movement commands from motor cortex to control complex, multi-joint robotic limbs. Additionally, Schwartz’s research has extended BCIs beyond motor control to sensory feedback, collaborating with colleagues to demonstrate that patients can experience tactile sensation through robotic arms they control with their brain, creating closed-loop sensory-motor systems.

Current Work

Schwartz directs the Motorlab at the University of Pittsburgh, where he holds a Chair in Systems Neuroscience. The lab studies how motor intentions are represented in the activity of single neurons and neural populations, how motor cortex activity relates to muscle activity, and how reaching, grasping and dexterous hand movements are controlled. It has worked with recordings in monkeys and, from 2012, in people with paralysis enrolled in Pittsburgh’s intracortical BCI trial, who control a prosthetic arm and hand with their brain activity.