MARVELS OF THE MIND –
Scott Hamel, a volunteer at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, uses the Brain
Computer Interface software to operate a computer.
— Photo by
Michael Wren
Initial funding for the project came from IBM, the
New York State Science and Technology Foundation and later the National
Institutes of Health and the McDonnell Foundation.
“The project has gradually grown. When we started, there were two other
labs in the world also doing this. Now, the field has exploded in the
last 10 years,” Wolpaw said.
“We have been in the center of this field and it has grown around us. We
are at the point of taking it out of the lab and into the homes to
finally help people.”
About a half-dozen individuals with advanced amyotrophic lateral
sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) now use the Wadsworth system in
their homes with the data transferred weekly from the patients’ homes to
the lab.
The Wadsworth Center, which employs long-term staff and students, has
also been working on extending BCI functionality to benefit people with
vision impairments through auditory stimuli.
A special population
“This is a very needy population,” Wolpaw said. “There is a real
incentive to provide them with communication devices. We are focusing on
people with little or
no remaining
movement, and
enabling
them to use activity from the brain to communicate.”
Wolpaw mentioned the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in which
paralyzed French magazine editor, Jean-Dominique Bauby, wrote his memoir by
blinking his left eyelid when his assistant spoke the letter he wanted.
“It’s clear now, that if disabled people have the benefit of better
communication, they can increase their productivity and creativity,”
Wolpaw said. “The first person to use our system is Dr. Scott Mackler, a
very productive 49-year-old neuroscientist who has advanced ALS.”
More disabled people will benefit from the BCI because of a joint program
developed by Wadsworth and Helen Hayes Hospital, the Health Department’s
rehabilitation hospital in West Haverstraw. The partnership with Helen Hayes
will help bring this technology to the people who truly need it.
By DEBORAH A. MILES
People who are physically disabled, even totally paralyzed, may have a
brighter future with a technology breakthrough that allows them to
communicate through their brain waves.
The Wadsworth Brain Computer Interface (BCI) assists a disabled person to
use a personal computer by wearing an electrode cap on the scalp that picks
up the electrical activity generated in the brain. The individual can read
and write e-mail messages, and even surf the Internet.
The BCI is the project of a team led by Dr. Jonathan Wolpaw, a research
physician at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, who has dedicated the last 22
years to finding a way to enhance the quality of life for those with an
active mind but helpless body.
In simplistic terms, the BCI software developed by Wolpaw, a PEF Division
205 member at the state Department of Health, translates a person’s brain
waves into computer commands such as moving a cursor or hitting click.
“The BCI reads the electrical jolts that are created by the brain’s neurons
with every thought, muscle movement and sensory signal processed by the
brain,” Wolpaw said.
Pioneering the BCI
Interest in a BCI project in New York started when a former NY health
commissioner, Dr. David Axelrod, teamed with IBM managers to find solutions
to help severely disabled people communicate through computers.
“The project trickled down to me because I knew about electroencephalography
(EEG) work,” Wolpaw said. “We started out using the same programs we were
using for basic research in a completely different area, the spinal cord, to
see if people could control the EEG
to do things.
It worked.”
