Mind Reading Device Allow Mute and Disabled To Communicate With Others

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) is an imaging procedure using MRI technology that measures brain activity by detecting associated changes in blood flow.

fMRI is used to help diagnose brain diseases and disorders. It also helps doctors study the brain's mental processes to determine how the brain responds to thoughts and feelings.

The technology uses Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). MRI uses radio waves and mgnetic fields are used to create the detailed images of the test subject. In fMRI, imaging is used to study the blood flow in the brain to detect areas of brain activity. A computer records the changes in the blood flow to show the brain was working in real time.

Using fMRI, researchers have developed a device that can help people who are mute or have difficulty speaking to converse with others.

With mind-reading speller, free-for-all conversations that are silent and still

Researchers have come up with a device that may enable people who are completely unable to speak or move at all to nevertheless manage unscripted back-and-forth conversation. The key to such silent and still communication is the first real-time, brain-scanning speller, according to the report published online on June 28 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

The new technology builds on groundbreaking earlier uses of fMRI brain scans to assess consciousness in people described as being in an unconscious, vegetative state and to enable them to answer yes and no questions. fMRI (or functional magnetic resonance imaging) is typically used for clinical and research purposes to track brain activity by measuring blood flow.

"The work of Adrian Owen and colleagues led me to wonder whether it might even become possible to use fMRI, mental tasks, and appropriate experimental designs to freely encode thoughts, letter-by-letter, and therewith enable back-and-forth communication in the absence of motor behavior," said Bettina Sorger of Maastricht University in The Netherlands.

Video: Mind Reading Speller

The new evidence shows that the answer to that thought question is yes. Sorger's team came up with a letter-encoding technique that requires almost no pre-training. Participants in their study voluntarily selected letters on a screen, which guided the letter encoding; for each specific character, participants were asked to perform a particular mental task for a set period of time. That produced 27 distinct brain patterns corresponding to each letter of the alphabet and the equivalent of a space bar, which could be automatically decoded in real-time using newly developed data analysis methods.

In each communication experiment, participants held a mini-conversation consisting of two open questions and answers. Everyone the researchers tested was able to successfully produce answers within a single one-hour session.

The results substantially extend earlier uses of fMRI, which allowed individuals to answer the equivalent of multiple-choice questions having four or fewer possible answers, by enabling free-letter spelling. That could make all the difference for people who are completely paralyzed and unable to benefit from other means of alternative communication, Sorger says.

Ultimately, she says their goal is to transfer the fMRI technology they've developed to a more portable and affordable method for measuring blood flow, such as functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

Quantum Day

29 June 2012

Mind Reading Device Allow Mute and Disabled To Communicate With Others