A Case of Mind over Matter
From: Boston Globe - 04/02/2006
By: Stephen Heuser

After decades of promising results in the lab and millions of dollars in
research funding, the field of brain-computer interaction still has yet to
live up to its promise and bring a product to market. At the Upstate New York
public health laboratory, neuroscientist Jonathan Wolpaw has been developing
an electrode-studded mesh cap that can relay brain signals to external
devices as instructions, offering greater independence for the severely
disabled. Other systems in development surgically implant electrodes to glean
instructions directly from a person's neural cells. Wolpaw's cap detects
electrical waves outside the brain, similar to the type that
electroencephalograms have read for decades, though it interprets them with
sophisticated software that Wolpaw and his team developed. "We're not talking
here about mind reading in the science fiction sense of the word," said
Emanuel Donchin, a brain researcher who developed the spelling application
used in Wolpaw's device. "You can't listen in on the conversations of the
brain. You just make inferences about the state of the brain." Sophisticated
computers and scientists' growing experience are bringing the technology
closer to the market. Wolpaw expects to have his devices in use by four or
five patients by June, and is investigating commercial avenues. The National
Institutes of Health are stepping up funding for brain-computer interface
research, and Wolpaw, who had been working largely under government grants,
won an international prize from the Altran Foundation for Engineering after
he and a colleague published a paper detailing how his device enabled a
patient to move a cursor in two dimensions. With the prize came more than $1
million worth of help from engineers, who have worked with Wolpaw to improve
and simplify the design of his cap and bring the cost down, though limited
demand could still be an obstacle to commercialization. 

Caption: Scott Hamel, a paraplegic, used a nylon cap to try to nudge a cursor
around a computer screen simply by thinking.

Read the entire article at:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/04/02/a_case_of_mind_over_matter/

Links:
Jonathan R. Wolpaw
http://www.wadsworth.org/resnres/bios/wolpaw.htm
wolpaw@wadsworth.org

bciresearch
http://www.bciresearch.org/

A non-invasive brain-computer interface for prosthesis control
http://www.jsmf.org/grants/bmb/essays/2003/wolpaw.htm

Altran Foundation for Innovation
http://www.fondation-altran.org/DevSite/index.jsp

Communication Option for the Severely Disabled Improves
http://www.health.state.ny.us/press/releases/2004/wolpaw_release_12-06-2004.htm

Brain wave technology could change lives
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6661974/

'Brainwave' cap controls computer
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4074869.stm

Potential in the Brain 
http://promag.cfes.ca/article.php?article=20-03-04

Patients Put on Thinking Caps
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,66259-0.html

Now That's Using Your Brain
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/medtech/1,70568-0.html

Cap Harnesses Human Thought to Move PC Cursor
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1207_041207_brain_interface.html

Brain Powered
http://www.discover.com/issues/may-94/features/brainpowered372/

Donchin's BCI
http://www.brain-tuning.de/2ndlevel/applic/p3001_b.htm

How To Talk When You Can't Speak
http://www.slate.com/id/2113353