- VIENNA (Sapa-DPA ) -- Austrian
technicians are using a system of thought transference to enable a paralysed
man to lift his hand and drink from a glass, achieving a medical first.
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- Thanks to a "brain-computer interface" developed
by a research team in Graz, 27-year-old Thomas Schweiger has been able
to perform the simple, but for him previously impossible, actions for the
first time since he was paralysed from the neck down in a swimming accident
in Malta in 1998.
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- Head of Graz University's institute for electronic and
biomedical technology, Gert Pfurtscheller, quoted in newspapers on Wednesday,
said that mental images formed by the patient caused tiny but measurable
changes in brain activity.
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- They were registered by the time-honoured method of an
electroencephalogram (EEG). Each mental image, such as clutching an object
or raising a hand, caused a distinct EEG pattern of minute electrical currents.
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- The currents were amplified via the brain-computer interface,
and transformed into binary steering signals. Then, surface electrodes
attached to the patient's left forearm stimulated the hand muscles and
started the required gripping or relaxing motion.
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- Pfurtscheller emphasised that the patient had to clearly
picture in his mind each action, whether opening or closing the hand, or
lifting the arm.
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- For daily use, a switch had been attached to his wheelchair
which he could activate with the slight movement remaining to him of his
left arm. "This is only the beginning. It's realistic that in a few
years' time, electrodes will be implanted in the head", the researcher
said.
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- Pfurtscheller spoke of the "iron will" of his
patient, and the months of training he had needed before his mental images
could steer his hand.
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- "Thomas thinks of a movement, if he wants to open
or close his hand. He can now eat a slice of bread, or drink a beer."
For other paralysed patients so far also dependent on others feeding them,
the new method could mean an immeasurable improvement in their quality
of life.
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- The reports said that Thomas Schweiger had otherwise
struggled through to a positive role in life since his disastrous accident.
He was a geography student whose parents drove him twice a week from his
home at Passail to Graz.
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- He had also been on study trips to Cuba and Australia.
"People who study geography should see the world," he said.
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- http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=116&art_id=qw1066217221862B213&set_id=1
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