“This is a major breakthrough in achieving autonomous communication among severely paralyzed patients whose paralysis is caused by either ALS, a cerebral hemorrhage or trauma,” noted Professor Nick Ramsey, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht, in a statement. “In effect, this patient has had a kind of remote control placed in her head, which enables her to operate a speech computer without the use of her muscles.”

Four sensor strips were implanted on De Bruijne’s motor cortex (the part of the brain that controls voluntary movements). Whenever she thinks about bringing her right thumb and ring finger together, the chip detects a small electrical spike. A computer receives these signals over wireless, and interprets it as a “brain click.”

To type specific letters, De Bruijne uses a tablet display that features four rows of letters. As a red cursor moves from left to right across the alphabet (plus some functions like deleting a letter or word, and selecting words based on the letters she has already spelled), she executes a brain click when the desired letter is highlighted. The process repeats until an entire word is spelled out and spoken by the computer’s speech program.

Using the system, patients like De Bruijne can express their desires or communicate problems, such as an itch, an excessive buildup of saliva, or problems with a ventilator. Looking ahead, the researchers would like to test the system on two more patients before undertaking a large-scale trial.

[New England Journal of Medicine]