‘Locked-in’ patients are happy, say the scientists who have read their minds
The latest study points a way towards restoring communication for patients paralysed by motor neuron disease
Miami — International scientists for the first time have found a way to communicate with people who are completely paralysed from degenerative motor neuron disease — and found that they report being happy. The report in Tuesday’s 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. ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease — the illness that World Cup-winning Springbok scrumhalf Joost van der Westhuizen suffers from — destroys the part of the nervous system responsible for movement. Patients are unable blink or move their eyes, and they breathe with the help of a ventilator. But using a noninvasive brain-computer interface that measured levels of oxygen on 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%. Some of the questions were common, such as asking a woman if her husband’s...
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