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"Brain computer interface" may help paralyzed communicate.

Albany scientists turn thought into words

Sitting stone still under a skull cap fitted with dozens of electrodes, Austrian scientist Peter Brunner stares at a laptop computer. Without so much as moving a nostril hair, he suddenly begins to compose a message — letter by letter — on a giant screen overhead.

"B-O-N-J-O-U-R" he writes with the power of his mind, much to the amazement of the largely French audience of scientists and curious onlookers gathered at the four-day European Research and Innovation Exhibition in Paris, which opened Thursday.

Brunner and two colleagues from the state-financed Wadsworth Center in Albany, New York were demonstrating a "brain computer interface" which digitalizes brain signals emitted as electrical impulses — picked up by the electrodes — to convey intent.

No spoons were bent, but this was definitely mind over matter.

Without recourse to nerves or muscles, the technology "can provide communication and control to people who are totally paralyzed" and unable to unable to speak or move, says researcher Theresa Sellers, also from Wadsworth.

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-06-09-braininterface_x.htm

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