
Families Hear from Completely Paralyzed Patients via New Device - thomyorkie
https://singularityhub.com/2017/02/12/families-finally-hear-from-completely-paralyzed-patients-via-new-mind-reading-device/
======
omginternets
It sounds like the novelty here is in the use of NIRS. A (very) similar
approach was done in fMRI some years ago.

Paper cited by the present article:
[http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...](http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002593)

Original fMRI paper: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.sci-
hub.cc/doi/10.1002/ana.23...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.sci-
hub.cc/doi/10.1002/ana.23656/full)

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themgt
I find it really fascinating that there's been problems using traditional
brain-computer interfaces with these patients, and the researcher who
developed this device specifically believes it's because once completely
locked-in they actually experience a dramatic shift in the nature of their
mental activity that prevents them from utilizing traditional BCI:

 _Niels Birbaumer, a neuroscientist at the Wyss Center for Bio and
Neuroengineering in Geneva and coauthor of the new research, has an idea about
why this may be, although there’s little evidence to support it so far. He
proposed that it becomes harder over time for patients to channel their
thoughts into voluntary action. “Anything you want, everything you wish does
not occur. So what the brain learns is that intention has no sense anymore,”
he says. “It is too difficult for them to switch from [a] more reflective
state into an attentive state. "_

And that the device they used itself was designed to be more a passive
monitoring of mental perception of input: _The team stuck to simple questions
that could be answered with a yes or no. “The answer in your head…occurs
quickly and it occurs like a reflex. You don’t have to mobilize a lot of
resources for such a simple answer,” Birbaumer says._

Earlier paper from Birbaumer: _We propose that a lack of contingencies between
goal directed thoughts and intentions may be at the heart of this problem.
Experiments with chronically curarized rats support our hypothesis; operant
conditioning and voluntary control of autonomic physiological functions turned
out to be impossible in this preparation. In addition to assisted
communication, BCIs consisting of operant learning of EEG slow cortical
potentials and sensorimotor rhythm were demonstrated to be successful in drug
resistant focal epilepsy and attention deficit disorder. First studies of non-
invasive BCIs using sensorimotor rhythm of the EEG and MEG in restoration of
paralysed hand movements in chronic stroke and single cases of high spinal
cord lesions show some promise, but need extensive evaluation in well-
controlled experiments. Invasive BMIs based on neuronal spike patterns, local
field potentials or electrocorticogram may constitute the strategy of choice
in severe cases of stroke and spinal cord paralysis. Future directions of BCI
research should include the regulation of brain metabolism and blood flow and
electrical and magnetic stimulation of the human brain (invasive and non-
invasive). A series of studies using BOLD response regulation with functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and near infrared spectroscopy demonstrated
a tight correlation between voluntary changes in brain metabolism and
behaviour._

[1] [http://www.popsci.com/new-brain-computer-interface-helps-
com...](http://www.popsci.com/new-brain-computer-interface-helps-completely-
paralyzed-people-communicate?dom=rss-default&src=syn)

[2]
[http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...](http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002593)

[3]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2151357/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2151357/)

~~~
M_Grey
So... in essence, people are so psychologically and behaviorally devastated,
that they lose the ability to even formulate whole classes of thoughts? That
sounds like they've been utterly broken as people.

~~~
derefr
"Thoughts" isn't quite what is being lost. Instead, you've still got the
neurons that understand how goals relate to motor operations, and you've still
got the motor neurons, but they've lost the neurotransmitter "protocol" (the
calibrated receptivity-weights on the synapses connecting them) that allows
them to communicate.

For me, an analogy to speech helps: a baby learning to speak must learn not
just language in a high-level sense, but at a lower level, they must "learn"
(i.e. calibrate neurotransmitter receptors attached to motor pathways) for how
strongly each muscle in their vocal cords should respond to a given low-level
phonemic motor-intent-signal from the brain.

If you didn't talk for years, those calibrations would drift, and although
you'd remember what it was like to talk, you'd have to "learn to use" (i.e.
calibrate) your vocal cords all over again.

The interesting thing here, is that this "calibration" (or lack thereof)
continues to cascade through the entire graph of neurons: think
backpropagation in machine learning. Motor-neurons that have nothing to talk
to lose their ability to talk; and then the motor-intent-recognizing neurons
find the only thing _they_ had to talk to (the motor neurons) are now
silent—as good as dead—and so _they_ no longer get reward-trained and lose
_their_ receptivity-calibration—and on and on, back until you reach whatever
subset of neurons is still doing things that achieve "rewards."

~~~
baddox
Is this essentially the idea of "muscle memory"?

~~~
grogenaut
Muscle memory is generally for referring to higher order things like blocking
in a fight, swinging a bat, and other fast reactions that get better through
practice instead of thought. Eg actions that your brain higher order plans but
isn't thought by many to be consciously controlled. In fact when you think
about a lot of these things consciously you mess up. Think throwing darts,
shooting pool, etc.

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dmichulke
1\. Why would patients locked-in for years be "generally happy"? Any theories?

2\. Did the fMRI people (see top comment) respond similarly as happy?

~~~
fsiefken
1\. Survival instinct? Perhaps man's search for meaning (Frankl) in the most
dire situations? Realizing that being depressed about the situation will not
help you and you make a conscious decision to accept the situation and be
happy and find meaning within it's constraints. Perhaps because of the
dominant western worldview people are inclined to view these locked in people
who are the apex of the 'poor man' as being miserable and weak (See Andrei
Plesu's article 'The Splendour and Misery of Humanism')
[http://www.fonselders.eu/wp-
content/uploads/docs/I_am_a_Euro...](http://www.fonselders.eu/wp-
content/uploads/docs/I_am_a_European_citizen_-
_Europe,_humanism_and_Andrei_Plesu_1-5-2008.pdf)

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failrate
I can foresee an application of this kind of technology along with VR being
able to provide a rudimentary autonomy for these types of patients.

~~~
wyager
Remote control of a cyborg body via BCI and VR goggles. Wasn't that the plot
of a movie that came out a few years back?

~~~
ohitsdom
You may be thinking of Gamer, but Surrogates also matches up with this. Both
pretty interesting movies.

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kurthr
What's amazing to me is that these patients can see. They can't focus their
cornea, because that would require muscle response. It's not even clear that
they can blink so they would require eye drops to keep their eyes open.

~~~
taneq
Nitpick: The cornea is a fixed focal length, and it's a separate lens behind
the cornea which flexes to 'accommodate' or focus the eye.

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Buge
They say they want to make improve it so patients can choose letters and
spells stuff. But with with just a binary choice that can be done with 5 bits.
Of course they will need more than that in order to increase accuracy.

~~~
yorwba
A few years ago I was at a demonstration for an interface like this. It worked
by measuring the effect of having an expectation fulfilled, i.e. the patient
is shown a number of shapes in sequence, each representing a different choice,
and when the one the patient wants appears, this can be inferred from an EEG.

IIRC, they used five different shapes and repeated each choice at least three
times for error correction, and two or three choices selected one keyboard
key. The poor grad student demonstrating the procedure made quite a few typos,
after which he had to select backspace, and the process was excruciatingly
slow anyway, so it took a few minutes until he managed to write "Hello,
welcome to ...". But definitely better than nothing if you are locked in.

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cconover
Black Mirror

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aaron695
I call bullshit.

The original paper is not bad as the article though, they call for replication
for instance -

"In view of the gravity of the subject matter (i.e., establishing
communication with nonverbal, completely paralyzed persons with preserved
cognition), a call for replication of the current results by other
investigators would be welcome. "

~~~
aaron695
What I find interesting is this is a known scammy field.

HN is Reddit+

I wonder if there is a good opportunity for HN+ (Or is there already?)

~~~
omginternets
>known scammy field

It really isn't, though. It's not a scam to publish with a p>.05 standard and
get false positives. It just means you need to take studies with a grain of
salt.

Note that this is a replication of a similar technique used in fMRI, but this
time in a different modality (=> different signal space). [See Owen, 2012].
Unless you think the academic field of machine-learning is a "scam", then this
is starting to look somewhat credible. It's getting interesting, let's say.

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kleiba
_The system, a portable brain-machine interface, translates brain activity
into simple yes or no answers to questions with around 70 percent accuracy._

Let's not forget that this means that (in the current version of the system)
about every third answer output by the system is wrong.

~~~
tyingq
They mention compensating by asking the same question many times.

------
revelation
_“Anything you want, everything you wish does not occur. So what the brain
learns is that intention has no sense anymore,”_

That sounds like incredible hogwash. Why not admit you are doing the
equivalent of connecting an oscilloscope to some random signal on a extremely
complex high-speed board, and well, _it 's not that easy_.

~~~
khedoros1
Because the same method works for people who aren't completely locked-in.

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yadavmahesh
Should to reliveing to thousands paralyzed or with motor control difficulties.

Another similar field that can be even helpful to normal humans, is connecting
the biological neural network to artificial one via nanobots. Immense benifits
for increasing average human intelligence, education ...

