When they suffer a brain injurysome people lose all their voluntary muscle movements and, with them, any ability to communication. suffer from what is known as locked-in syndrome, a condition that refers to those patients who are conscious and alert, but cannot move or communicate in any way. At least they couldn’t do it until now, because a team of scientists from the Wyss Center, Zurich, has designed a brain-machine interface (BCI) that allows these people to communicate by reading their brain waves. It would be a kind of preliminary step to what he intends to do Elon Musk with neurolinkwith the difference that it has already been used in a human and the results have been very promising.
The patient in question has been a 34 year old man with paralysis caused by a amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). They were installed two microelectrode arrays in its motor cortex, so that even if he couldn’t move a muscle, his intention could be detected by thinking about it. This would be transformed into commands to answer yes or no questions or spell words.
As described in the study on this BCI published in Nature Communications, was a tedious process, which did not work in all attempts. However, in one of them he was able to use their brain waves to tell your child an “I love you”. Much remains to be investigated in this direction; but, just for that, the whole process has already been worth it.
Why is a BCI that reads brain waves necessary?
When a patient loses the ability to speak for a brain injury Several communication options are presented. If the paralysis has not affected their limbs they can use a keyboard conventional or adapted to your ailment. Others can no longer do this, but they do retain mobility in the eyes or in some muscles of his face. In this case, devices capable of reading these movements and transforming them into words can be used. That is precisely what the Intel-designed machine with which the physicist Stephen Hawking communicated for much of his life.
But what if you can’t even move your eyelids or facial muscles? In this case, the communication is considered lost. It is a serious problem, because suddenly the body itself becomes a prison for the conscious brain of these people. Faced with these types of problems, there is a need to develop BCI devices such as those designed by Neuralink. Elon Musk’s company ensures that he will be able to read minds through the interpretation of brain waves. However, as the authors of this latest research clarify, there is still a long way to go before we are at that point.
Facilitating communication for patients with paralysis
This new BCI is not intended read minds of patients as Neuralink. At least not in the strictest sense of the word.
What it does is detect how the patient modulates your brain waves to answer yes or no questions. In addition, he was given an alphabet so that he could read it letter by letter and the peaks in these waves that were generated when he reached a desired letter were measured. In this way, I could spell a word. Specifically, they began by asking him to spell his name, that of his wife and that of his 4-year-old son.
It was not an easy process. In fact, there were days when the letters detected by the BCI did not correspond to existing words. However, slightly less than half of the days of practice did achieve communication. could send messages such as requesting a head massage, ordering curry with potato and Bolognese for lunch or saying “I love you” to your child.
Now it remains to be seen if the technique can be further refined so that it can say more messages and, above all, to see if it works just as well with other patients. It’s a small step, to be sure, but for this 34-year-old it may be the most wonderful thing that has happened since ALS broke into his life.