Fully paralysed patients report being happy
Researchers detect response through brain-oxygen levels
MIAMI // International scientists for the first time have found a way to communicate with people who are completely paralysed from degenerative motor neuron disease – who report they are happy.
The study in the journal PLOS Biology is based on four people with complete “locked-in” syndrome, meaning they are unable to move at all due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease), which destroys the part of the nervous system responsible for movement.
Patients are unable to blink or move their eyes and they breathe with the help of a ventilator. But using a non- invasive brain-computer interface that measured levels of oxygen in the brain, researchers were able to detect whether the patients were thinking “yes” or “no” in response to a series of questions, with an accuracy rate of about 70 per cent. Some of the questions were simple, such as asking a woman her husband’s name or if Berlin was the capital of France.
A man was asked if his daughter should marry her boyfriend, and he answered “no” nine out of 10 times.
All four patients in the study were asked: “Are you happy?”
They each consistently responded “yes” over weeks of questioning.
“We were initially surprised at the positive responses when we questioned the four completely locked-in patients about their quality of life,” said lead author Niels Birbaumer, professor at the Wyss Centre for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, Switzerland.
“All four had accepted artificial ventilation to sustain their life when breathing became impossible. In a sense, they had already chosen to live.”
Until now, researchers believed that people with this condition were unable to communicate because they lacked the goaldirected thinking needed to use a brain-computer interface.
“The striking results overturn my own theory that people with completely locked-in syndrome are not capable of communication,” said Prof Birbaumer.
“We found that all four patients we tested were able to answer the personal questions we asked them through their thoughts.”