Wheelchair Controlled by Thought

macduffman writes "New Scientist reports on another development in interfacing with the central nervous system. The system 'eavesdrops' on signals sent from the brain to the larynx, so even people who lack the muscular control to vocalize a command can operate it. The potential applications of this technology are as varied as human imagination, among them: allowing a person who has lost speech capability to vocalize again." From the article:"The wheelchair could help people with spinal injuries, or neurological problems like cerebral palsy or motor neurone disease, operate computers and other equipment despite serious problems with muscle control. The system will work providing a person can still control their larynx, or 'voice box,' which may be the case even if the lack the muscle coordination necessary to produce coherent speech."

Comments

What about the mouth?

[Zouden]

Surely the mouth and tongue are also required for speech. How much information can you convey using just your larynx?

Li'l Abner covered this (sort of)

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.lil-abner.com/

Al Capp was always sending up the captains of industry. He dreamed up the Shmoos who could solve all the problems of humanity. Naturally, the captains of industry spent a lot of time making sure the Shmoos didn't proliferate.

In one of the story lines an inventor came up with a car that needed no fuel, it was powered by the heartbeat of its driver. The captains of industry lured him up to the 100th floor of a building to demonstrate his (small) vehicle. As he was driving it down the hall they arranged for a beautiful woman to appear. His heartbeat raced and the car accelerated uncontrollably through the window at the end of the hall. Problem solved.

In light of the above, I dread the advent of wheelchairs controlled by their users' thoughts.

More channels give more bandwidth, in parallel

[turing_m]

The deal with this device is that it is intercepting the nerves that go to the larynx (from what I can tell from the article). I don't think that's much more than one channel.

Consider what your feet and hands do with driving. It's generally easier to control something with a bunch of different channels available to yourself, and you get more bandwidth. Kind of like hunting and pecking versus touch typing. Or playing an FPS with just the keyboard compared to mouse + keyboard. The brain will use as many channels as it can for control. May take longer to learn but the end result is more complete control, with less fatigue.