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A user played Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" on an Android tablet piano app and then bought supplies online. Another sent a few SMS and checked the weather forecast. A third watched videos before launching Stevie Nicks on Pandora.
They did not use their fingers to type commands or their voices to navigate the interface.
They used their noggins, particularly the motor cortex region of their brain where a baby aspirin chip had been implanted as part of a new study.
Last year, we presented an innovative study by the BrainGate consortium in which the same brain-computer interface (BCI) allowed a paralyzed man to grasp up to eight words a minute by thinking alone. In these new results from the BrainGate2 clinical trial, published today in the journal PLOS One, three paralyzed participants used the BCI to operate a standard tablet.
"We wanted to see if we could allow a person to control not an evolutionary or alternative communication device, but the same ubiquitous device that non-disabled people use every day," says co-author of the study. , Leigh Hochberg of Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital Providence VA Medical Center.
All three participants suffer from weakness or loss of movement in the arms due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease) or spinal cord injury. Each received the brain implant, a set of microelectrodes, as part of the BrainGate2 clinical trial.
For this particular study, decoded neural signals from the implant were routed via a standard user interface device protocol providing a virtual mouse. This "mouse" has been paired with a Google Nexus 9 tablet via Bluetooth.
Each participant was invited to test seven common tablet applications: email, chat, web browser, video sharing, streaming music, weather program, and news aggregator. The researchers also asked users if they wanted to use additional applications. They then added the keyboard app, purchases on Amazon and a calculator.
Photo: BrainGate Collaboration
A participant in the BrainGate trial who is a musician played an excerpt from "Ode to Joy". on a digital piano interface.
Participants made up to 22 point-and-click selections per minute and entered up to 30 characters per minute in text and e-mail programs. In addition, the three participants really liked using the tablet, says Hochberg.
As described in the document, a user noted:[T]The tablet has become second nature for me, very intuitive. It seemed more natural to me than when I remember using a mouse. "Another said,"[A]snoop! I have more control over this than on what I normally use. The third added that he "liked" sending SMS via the tablet.
The BrainGate2 clinical trial is ongoing with 13 participants in previous and current studies, and the team continues to improve the speed and reliability of their neural decoding software, says Hochberg. The multi-university consortium is also developing a wireless, fully implantable device with a rechargeable battery, similar to pacemakers and cochlear implants. "I'm optimistic that this technology is following a similar path," he adds.
For users with paralysis, the ability to communicate more freely may be worthwhile to be operated on and to have a brain implanted. Other research teams, including Facebook, are working on the development of non-invasive technologies that would translate the "desired word" into brain-free text, but these efforts have not yet yielded results.
"From our point of view – and we are totally dedicated and focused on helping people with paralysis and severe speech disorders", until now, it seems like an entirely device implanted will be a fast and reliable method, "says Hochberg.
And thinking of Thanksgiving, he adds, "I am extremely grateful not just to the participants in our ongoing BrainGate trials, but to all those participating in the first clinical trials just to help others."
Updated on Nov. 21, 2018
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