Enabling the Disabled - How Tweet it is

Adam Wilson posted a status update on Twitter recently by merely thinking about it. Although his message, “using EEG to send tweet,” comprised only 23 characters, his breakthrough demonstrates a new way for “locked-in” patients to communicate by integrating a brain-computer interface with modern communication tools.

Click here to see the video.

Wilson, a University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering doctoral student, is part of a growing group of researchers around the world hoping to perfect a communication system for users who are physically disabled, but whose brains function normally. Possible beneficiaries are people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), high spinal cord injuries or brain-stem stroke.

How it Works Wonders

By wearing an electrode-studded cap hooked up to a computer, the electrodes identify electrical signals in the brain - in essence, thoughts - and translate these signals into physical actions, such as moving a cursor on a computer screen. Watch the video.

“We started thinking that moving a cursor on a screen is a good scientific exercise,” comments Justin Williams, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at UW-Madison and Wilson’s adviser. “But when we talk to people who have locked-in syndrome or a spinal-cord injury, their number one concern is communication.”

Basically, the interface involves a keyboard displayed on a computer screen. “The way this works is that all the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually,” explains Williams. “And what your brain does is, if you are looking at the ‘R’ on the screen and all the other letters are flashing, nothing happens. But when the ‘R’ flashes, your brain says, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Something is different about what I was just paying attention to.’ And you see a momentary change in brain activity.”

Tweaking Twitter’s Capabilities

Twitter users send regular updates known as “Tweets” which are messages limited to 140 characters and delivered to other Twitter users who’ve signed up to receive them. “Someone could simply tell family and friends how they’re feeling today,” adds Williams. “People at the other end can be following their thread and never know that the person is disabled. That would really be an enabling type of communication means for those people, and I think it would make them feel, in the online world, that they are not that much different from everybody else. That’s why we did these things.”

Steve Daitch is the Social Media Manager at Mind360.com - a leading scientific brain training games developer for boosting your memory, attention, executive functions, reasoning, and other key cognitive skills. As a Mind360 visitor you simply select your own Personal Training Program, which comes complete with a personal coach and constant feedback to ensure your swift and visible progress.