Telepathy for the paralyzed
New portable "telepathic" devices
they will allow completely paralyzed people to find a connection with the outside world
DailyTechInfo based on Discovery News: Portable Mind Reader May Help Patients With Locked-In SyndromeThere are quite a lot of people in the world who, due to various diseases or other reasons, have completely lost the ability to move.
Quite often, such people, who live only at the expense of devices that support their vital functions, are fully conscious, but at best they can only move their eyes only in a limited way. They are able to see, hear and think, but they are unable to communicate with others, i.e. they are literally locked in their bodies.
In recent years, neuropathologists and engineers have made some progress in building bridges between paralyzed people and the outside world. The key technology that helped them do this was functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allows you to monitor brain activity of a certain kind and which allows you to implement the simplest types of dialogues with the patient at the level of "Yes" or "No" answers to the questions asked. But even these simplest functions are already a huge achievement: with their help, you can find out exactly what the patient is hurting or what kind of movie he wants to watch.
But fMRI scanners are quite complex devices that require specialized facilities. Only qualified personnel who have undergone special training can work with such equipment and, due to all the reasons listed above, this technology will remain inaccessible to the broad masses of patients for a very long time.
Two independent groups of researchers, one from Canada and the other from Austria, are working on solving the above–mentioned problem of communication with paralyzed people. Nevertheless, the work of these groups gives very similar results. Both groups are developing portable and inexpensive "telepathic" devices that can be used both in small medical institutions and at home.
Both devices under development work using a grid of electrodes attached to the patient's head, with which the devices read electroencephalographic (EEG) pictures of the activity of certain areas of the human brain. Feedback is carried out by means of vibration devices attached to the hands or other parts of the patient in places where his skin has sensitivity, which is established experimentally.
Both devices require minimal setup, during which the patient needs to concentrate on the answers "Yes" or "No", after which experts experimentally find suitable places to install vibration elements.
Currently, both groups of developers have only unfinished devices, which, nevertheless, demonstrate higher accuracy in determining responses and are more portable than existing similar installations based on EEG or fMRI. In addition to performing its main function, such a system can also be used to identify patients with limited communication abilities and who were previously considered to be completely in a vegetative state.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru13.02.2015