'Taking Up A Dialogue' With The Brain: Letter Decoding From Single-trial Brain Signals

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience;  MRI / PET / Ultrasound;  Clinical Trials / Drug Trials
Article Date: 13 Jun 2009 - 2:00 PDT

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Brain-computer interfaces 'translate' what a person is thinking in words or actions. Researchers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands performed functional MRI brain scans on healthy participants, instructing them to 'type' by performing mental tasks corresponding to different letters in the English alphabet. Researchers were able to use signals from the participants' brain activation patterns to decode information about the intended letter that a participant was thinking about, and to use this in a conversation with the experimenters without any spoken words. It is hoped that such technology can enable communication with 'locked-in' patients or assessment of consciousness in non-responsive patients.

Authors: B. Sorger, J. Reithler, B. Dahmen, R. Goebel, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands

Source: Organization for Human Brain Mapping