Society for Neuroscience Features Wadsworth BCI at Annual Meeting
Wadsworth Center's Brain-Computer Interface project was highlighted at a press briefing at the 2007 Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, held in San Diego, CA. BCI pioneer Jonathan R. Wolpaw, M.D., and several members of his team gave presentations about their further development of this system that provides an alternative communication and control option for the severely disabled.
from Society for Neuroscience press release
November 6, 2007 -- Wadsworth Center scientists in Albany, N.Y., have succeeded in developing a BCI that provided people who are severely disabled with the ability to use their personal computers. For example, they were able to word-process, send e-mail messages, and remotely turn on or off the lights or TV in their homes. In the future, even more environmental control options will be available, says Eric Sellers, Ph.D.
The Wadsworth Center BCI system enabled a scientist with advanced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), to communicate by e-mail with his research team. "It has allowed him to continue to direct a highly successful NIH-funded medical research program," Sellers says. "The initial results indicate that the BCI can function without close technical oversight and can improve communication ability and quality of life. This initial success suggests that a home BCI system can be of practical value for people with severe motor disabilities and that caregivers without special expertise can learn to support it."
Five severely disabled people have participated in the Wadsworth research program that evaluates the center's BCI system. The first participant, the 49-year-old scientist with ALS, has been unable to move any muscles in his body except for his eyes. For up to five to seven hours every day since February 2006, he has worn a simple electrode cap on his scalp that picks up the electrical activity generated by his brain. The cap recorded electroencephalographic (EEG, or brain wave) activity at eight scalp locations.
The user's brain waves were translated into simulated keystrokes. Software developed at Wadsworth presented rows and columns of a 72-element, 8" x 9" matrix that flashed in random order while the user paid attention to the element that he or she wanted to select. The software recognized that element and executed the appropriate keystroke. With this design, the patient could use the entire keyboard.
Sellers says that caregivers and family members learned to place the electrode cap on patients' scalps, enable the software, and generally maintain the system, which the researchers monitored remotely via data transferred weekly from patients' homes to the lab. To date, a total of five people with ALS have used the Wadsworth system in their homes.
In addition, the Wadsworth Center team has tested protocols in the laboratory that extend BCI functionality to benefit people with limited eye mobility, poor visual acuity, or difficulty maintaining gaze, impairments that can occur with severe motor disorders such as ALS, brainstem stroke, or cerebral palsy. For these individuals, the scientists have been developing a BCI system that uses auditory rather than visual stimuli.
In the auditory BCI system, the rows and columns of a 6" x 6" matrix of 36 letters and numbers are represented by six environmental sounds. For each selection, the user paid attention to the sound representing the column or row containing the desired choice. Thus far, most of the people who tested this auditory system in the lab used it with accuracy sufficient to support effective BCI operation.
The researchers also have been developing a BCI system that uses sensorimotor rhythms (SMRs), oscillations in the EEG recorded from the scalp over the sensorimotor cortex. The SMRs provided simple communication capabilities, and the people learned to use SMRs to control a computer cursor in one or two dimensions.