A Mind-Reading Device Gives Words to "Locked In" Patients
From: MIT Technology Review - 04/28/2017
By: Emily Mullin

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a massive stroke that left him
paralyzed and speechless, with only the ability to blink his left eyelid.
Using just that eye, he silently dictated his memoir, The Diving Bell and the
Butterfly, later adapted into a film. Bauby suffered from "locked-in
syndrome," in which patients are completely paralyzed except for some eye
movement. Some patients eventually lose even the ability to blink, cutting
off all contact with the world and raising questions about whether they are
still fully conscious–and, if so, whether they still wish to live.

Now researchers in Europe say they’ve found out the answer after using a
brain-computer interface to communicate with four people who had lost all
voluntary movement as a result of Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic
lateral sclerosis.

Read the entire article at:
https://tribunecontentagency.com/article/a-mind-reading-device-gives-words-to-locked-in-patients

Links:
Niels Birbaumer, PhD
http://www.wysscenter.ch/people/niels-birbaumer

Brain-Computer Interface-Based Communication in the Completely Locked-In State
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002593

Communicating with a locked in patient (video 3:05)
https://youtu.be/BSL0y7dR-fc

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diving_Bell_and_the_Butterfly

Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering
http://www.wysscenter.ch/en/home