Man Locked-In After Stroke Communicates Again via Brain-Computer Interface

Finding yourself “locked-in” due to disease or injury is probably one of the most frightening and mentally challenging situations a person can find oneself in. Until recently, these patients had little to hope for, but things are quickly changing as a new study published in Science Translational Medicine has described a locked-in post-stroke patient who is able to communicate via a brain-computer interface (BCI).

Researchers from East Tennessee State University and Wake Forest University worked for over a year with a man who suffered from a brainstem stroke. He had a brain-computer interface implanted which focused on the P300 event-related potential that results from conscious decision making. A screen before the patient presented a grid of characters and a bar that continuously slides from top to bottom and then left to right is used by the patient to home in on the wanted character. When the bar passes a letter or number the man was interested in, simply wanting it to appear at the time it’s highlighted resulted in the BCI registering that event.

During the 62 recording sessions where the man was given the chance to spell and communicate with others, in 42 of them he was successful in typing out words requested by the researchers and to spell out his own messages to family members.

The research team was previously successful in helping locked-in ALS patients to communicate, which led to attempting the same with a post-stroke patient.

Study in Neurotechnology: Noninvasive brain-computer interface enables communication after brainstem stroke…

Link: ETSU Brain-Computer Interface Laboratory…

East Tennessee State University press release: Research finds that BCI device helps stroke victims communicate…