Brain Electrical Stimulation for Animal Navigation

The brain stimulation and its widespread use is one of the most important subjects in studies of neurophysiology. In brain electrical stimulation methods, following the surgery and electrode implantation, electrodes send electrical impulses to the specific targets in the brain. The use of this stimulation method is provided therapeutic benefits for treatment chronic pain, essential tremor, Parkinsons disease, major depression, and neurological movement disorder syndrome (dystonia). One area in which advancements have been recently made is in controlling the movement and navigation of animals in a specific pathway. It is important to identify brain targets in order to stimulate appropriate brain regions for all the applications listed above. An animal navigation system based on brain electrical stimulation is used to develop new behavioral models for the aim of creating a platform for interacting with the animal nervous system in the spatial learning task. In the context of animal navigation the electrical stimulation has been used either as creating virtual sensation for movement guidance or virtual reward for movement motivation. In this paper, different approaches and techniques of brain electrical stimulation for this application has been reviewed. Keywords: Rat Robot, Brain Computer Interface, Electrical Stimulation, Cyborg Intelligence, Brain to Brain InterfaceComment: in Fars

A new low cost cascaded transformer multilevel inverter topology using minimum number of components with modified selective harmonic elimination modulation

In this paper, a novel cascaded transformer multilevel inverter is proposed. The number of the switching devices is reduced in the proposed topology. This topology comprises of a DC source, several single phase low-frequency transformers, two main power switches and some bidirectional switching devices. In this topology, only one bidirectional switch is employed for each transformer. However, in conventional cascaded transformer multilevel inverter, four switching devices are required for each transformer. Therefore, more output voltage levels can be obtained using fewer switching components. Reduction in the number of switching devices which also means reduction in the number of gate drivers results in smaller size and low implementation cost. Switching power losses are also reduced in this topology. Selective harmonic elimination (SHE) technique is applied to the proposed inverter to obtain a high quality output voltage. Simulation and experimental results are also provided to verify the feasibility of the proposed converter

A Study on an Improved Three-Winding Coupled Inductor Based DC/DC Boost Converter with Continuous Input Current

This paper proposes a novel high voltage conversion gain DC/DC boost converter for renewable energy applications and systems. The proposed converter utilizes a three-winding coupled inductor. The presented converter benefits from a unique advantage, as the actual turn ratio of the coupled inductor is decreased in the charging state of the coupled inductor. However, while the inductor is discharging, the actual turn ratio is increased. This feature leads to a very high voltage conversion gain. Furthermore, a passive clamp circuit is employed to recover the leakage current of the coupled inductor. The voltage stresses on the semiconductors are also reduced. In addition, the average current of the primary side of the coupled inductor is zero. This will reduce the total energy stored in the passive elements of the converter. The paper analyzes the Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM) and the operation principles of the presented converter are thoroughly derived. A 250 W laboratory hardware prototype is prepared to verify the proper operation of the presented converter. The obtained experimental results validate the feasibility of the presented converter