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Think of it as like a mental joystick."Īfterwards, I approached Fath and Fedele for more information. "These thoughts are acquired by an EEG headset, interpreted by a computer and can be used to control just about anything from a communicator to home automation or robotics. "BrainControl gives disabled people the power to control objects with their thoughts," said Fath. The majority communicated using eye-tracking systems but for those who could no longer open or move their eyes and who were effectively imprisoned inside their bodies, neurosensing technology was their only hope. Of these, approximately 660,000 live in the developed world, he explained. How could a device funded by Kickstarter and incorporating nothing more than a clever machine-reading algorithm read the very stuff of consciousness? Was this just the way medical breakthroughs happened in the era of Big Data or was the Epoc headset the modern equivalent of one of those quack phrenology devices from the early part of the 19th century that claimed to be able to read personality from the shape of a person's cranium?įath's pitch at the masterclass was certainly persuasive: worldwide, some 3.7m people suffer from severe communication and learning disabilities due to conditions such as ALS, stroke, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury. Wearing a mismatching jacket and tie and with his low-key delivery, Fath cut a far less assured figure than his corporately attired competitors but, though BrainControl failed to place in the top three, his presentation was, to my mind, the most intriguing. I first met Fedele and his business partner Jarrod Fath at a "masterclass" for digital health startups in London in November 2013. Now we know that is not true and that he is fully aware of what is going on around him."
![eeg headset eeg headset](http://neurosky.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/BrainlinkBanner.jpg)
"Before he started using the headset, doctors at the hospital in Bari had diagnosed him with dementia. "If it wasn't for BrainControl, we wouldn't have known that Anselmo was in pain and that he can still see, even though he can no longer open his eyelids unaided," she tells me.
Eeg headset install#
It is because Loredana is convinced her father is cognitively aware and that BrainControl is his only hope of communicating that she has invited Fedele to her home in Bari to install the latest version of BrainControl's operating system.
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"Once we have captured the thought "push", the next stage is to train the subject to get control of the cursor."Īccording to Loredana, Anselmo, who is 77 and has had ALS for 11 years, has previously used BrainControl to correctly name his five-year-old grandson, Theodore, who was born after he became locked-in, and to inform the family that he is suffering dental pain. "I usually ask people to imagine pushing an object with their mind," says Pasquale Fedele, the engineer who designed BrainControl's machine-learning algorithm. In theory, all Anselmo has to do to move the cursor from one position to another is to think "push". The cursor has three positions: "si", "no", and "non so" ("yes", "no", and "don't know"). By analysing those signals using a machine-learning algorithm, BrainControl, a Sienna-based developer, claims to be able to distinguish Anselmo's thoughts and intentions from other brain noise and use those signals to operate a cursor on a tablet computer. Indeed right now, I am told, the 14 marble-sized electrodes in the Epoc's plastic clip-on frame are monitoring the EEG signals from Anselmo's brain and sending them wirelessly to a control unit. Unable to speak or open his eyes, his only hope of communicating is via a state-of-the-art neuroheadset attached to his scalp.ĭesigned by Emotiv Systems, a Californian neuroengineering company, the Epoc headset purports to give users the power to control objects with their thoughts and was a succès fou on Kickstarter, where users stumped up $1.6m to fund its development – 16 times Emotiv's original target.
![eeg headset eeg headset](https://innovationorigins.com/app/uploads/2018/01/Screen-Shot-2018-01-11-at-13.36.34.png)
Paralysed from head to toe with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Anselmo is completely "locked in". It is impossible to tell whether Anselmo Paglialonga, a former major in the Italian carabinieri, has heard. L oredana Paglialonga leans across her father's prone body and whispers in his ear: "Spinta, Papi, spinta" ("Push Daddy, push").