Paralyzed woman controls tablet with her thoughts
A California woman with a chip implanted in her brain has successfully browsed the web using a tablet powered by her thoughts, bringing scientists one step closer to helping people who are completely paralyzed engage with the outside world.
The woman, known as clinical trial participant T6, has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which is otherwise known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. She can talk, manipulate objects and get around in a wheelchair, but the terminal disease will eventually render her completely paralyzed.
T6 volunteered to let scientists implant a microchip in her brain as part of a clinical trial called BrainGate 2, hoping to help them figure out how to help paralyzed people communicate by programming computers to read their minds. At the annual Society for Neuroscience Conference in Chicago on Oct. 21, Stanford post- doctoral researcher Paul Nuyujukian gave a presentation announcing T6 had successfully operated a tablet using the technology.
What’s more, scientists were able to replicate the results in a second participant on the east coast, Nuyujukian said in an interview. But Nuyujukian approaches the topic with a scientist’s caution, noting the technology is still being tested for safety and it’s too early to say for sure whether it will have useful medical applications.
“This is still very much a research study,” he said. “There’s no implication of clinical benefit.”
A less cautious person might be forgiven for being a little more excited. Scientists have plugged a woman’s head into a mind- reading computer that helped her browse the web for gardening advice. “Implication of clinical benefit” or not, that’s huge. If future trials prove successful, the same technology could also allow paralyzed people to control robot arms and other prostheses with their thoughts.
Before the tablet trial, BrainGate 2 scientists had developed a custom piece of software with a virtual keyboard, allowing participants to move a cursor and type out messages one letter at a time with their thoughts. The microchip is implanted in a part of the participant’s brain responsible for hand movements, with the participant asked to imagine moving her index finger left and right on the tablet and her thumb up and down.
The chip connects to a cable plugged into the side of the participant’s head, which in turn connects to a computer with software that interprets their thoughts and moves the cursor. “In many ways, it’s like controlling a joystick on a gamepad, just with the mind instead of directly with one’s fingers,” Nuyujukian said.
But the scientists wanted a slicker system, one that predicted sentences and words to make it easier and faster for participants to use. Then they realized such a device already exists — and what’s more, it’s readily available at Best Buy or on Amazon.
The scientists bought a Nexus 9 tablet with an Android operating system and used a Bluetooth connection to pair it with the computer interpreting the participant’s thoughts. Nuyujukian said the technology that links the computer plugged into the participant’s brain with the tablet is essentially the same as the technology that powers a wireless mouse.
Using the technology, T6 could do anything anyone else could do with a tablet. She searched the web for tips on gardening orchids, sent emails and played a tune using a keyboard app.
But do we really want computers plugged into our brains and reading our minds? Didn’t someone make a movie or two about this sort of thing? Didn’t those movies end badly?
“The science fiction mind can run very wild with these types of ideas,” Nuyujukian said. “But as we are using it right now, these systems simply record information from the brain. That’s all there is to it.”
Any technology that requires brain surgery has limited potential for widespread adoption. But there are already other, less- invasive products on the market that interpret brain activity in a less sophisticated way.
Nuyujukian said we all owe the participants in the clinical trial a big thank you.
“These participants’ contribution to science and to our lab and to the greater good of moving medicine forward is something we cannot overlook,” he said. “They are making a huge, huge contribution, both with their body and with their time — devoting what little time they have left to science. We owe them everything.”