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Brain-wave technology for the disabled is eye-openingBy Amy Halloran Research neurologist Dr. Jonathan Wolpaw has been studying spinal-cord function for 30 years. His work at the Wadsworth Center at the New York State Department of Health focuses on two related areas: examining the spinal cord to see how neurological learning is encoded into the spinal cord and, most famously, developing brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to help severely disabled people communicate. Wolpaw recently described the Wadsworth BCI and his pursuit of
augmentative communication technologies that don’t require nerves and
muscles.
“People who are severely disabled can’t use those pathways, so we’re providing them with channels that use different signals, signals directly from the brain instead of nerves and muscles,” Wolpaw said. “Our purpose initially is to restore very basic communication from yes-no on up to simple e-mail. Our focus is on people who are nearly or totally paralyzed.” The Wadsworth BCI is a system that allows people to use brain signals to simulate typing. Users wear a cap fitted with eight electrodes that read EEG (electroencephalographic) signals from the scalp. The set-up also includes a laptop fitted with BCI2000, a software program that was developed at the lab, and an amplifier to magnify the brain waves and feed them to the computer. Users see a flashing grid of eight columns and nine rows of letters and numbers on the computer screen. The software can recognize particular brain-wave patterns indicating that the user wants to select letters or numbers from the matrix on the screen. “The first BCI home users are people with minimal remaining useful movement,” Wolpaw said. “Most of our current users have ALS, but the largest group of potential users (is) people with cerebral palsy. There could be many more users with ALS. Right now, about 90% of people with ALS in the United States decide to die rather than go on ventilators. There’s a lot of evidence that, if they have support and can continue to communicate, they can live reasonably pleasant lives even though they’re totally paralyzed. So maybe some of those 90% would make a different decision if better communication methods were widely available.” The user system developed at Wadsworth works well for people who can see, and the hope is that people who are completely locked in and cannot see very well will also have use of the technology. Wolpaw and his fellow researchers also believe prosthetic control is possible using a similar sort of brain-computer interface. Although the long-term benefits are exciting to imagine, in the meantime, people are enjoying a significantly enhanced degree of freedom thanks to the project. The highest-profile success story comes from Scott Mackler, a National Institutes of Health-funded scientist. Mackler, who has had ALS for seven years, began using the Wadsworth BCI in 2006 when his previous augmentative communication system stopped working for him. Via an e-mail he typed using the Wadsworth BCI, Mackler told Wolpaw that he could not run his laboratory without BCI. Having communication skills has enabled him to continue working and led to his receiving a grant from NIH, which allows him to employ three people in his laboratory. Wolpaw noted that NIH grants are very hard to get under any circumstances. The Wadsworth Center has donated nearly 200 copies of its BCI2000 software to labs around the world; it is now being used in a variety of research projects. When the software was developed in 2003, the scientific community welcomed this tool that would standardize BCI research efforts and keep researchers from having to reinvent the software wheel with each BCI experiment. The spark for the project came in the mid-1980s, when a synergistic collision of research, technological advances and funding occurred, resulting in remarkable advances in communication and control for people with the most limited options in those realms. “One of the reasons that was possible in the ‘80s was that very high-powered desktop computers were developed, and people had access to more processing power,” said research scientist Theresa Vaughan. “Digitization of the EEG and high-powered computers, coupled with medical advances that allowed people who were locked in, nearly locked in, or very disabled to survive for long periods of time, came together all at the same time.” The funding piece came when IBM wanted to advance technology in the field. IBM approached the then-commissioner of health for New York state, Dr. David Axelrod, who brought IBM and Wolpaw together. Research scientist Dr. Dennis McFarland soon entered the picture, and the two began collaborating. Nearly two decades of research led to the current service platform, the BCI2000 software and the equipment necessary to run it. The next logical step is getting the system into the hands of as many users as possible. Wolpaw and others are currently taking steps to form a self-sustaining non-profit entity that will develop and maintain commercial systems to those who need this tool. Wolpaw is also engaged in other work for which he is world-renowned: spinal-cord research. “My basic interest has been looking at change or plasticity in the spinal cord as a model for looking at learning,” he said. “The spinal cord is like the rest of the nervous system in that it changes over the course of life. It is involved in learning, in how we learn to walk, to speak, to get more sophisticated skills like dancing. If you have a rat with a spinal-cord injury (that’s) not walking normally, you can create a change in a reflex pathway, (and) it will actually help (it) walk better. We’re developing these kinds of methods that can be used to guide spinal-cord plasticity to help restore function after injury. And this will probably become increasingly important as the methods for producing actual physical regeneration of the spinal cord are developed.” Note: Anyone interested in the Wadsworth BCI should contact Debra Zeitlin at the Center for Rehabilitation Technology (CRT) at Helen Hayes Hospital in West Haverstraw, N. Y. The phone number is 1-888-70-REHAB. **************************** Amy Halloran is a writer who lives in upstate New York with her sons and husband. |
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