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Reached Via a Mind-Reading Device, Deeply Paralyzed Patients Say They Want to Live (technologyreview.com)
Neuroscientists have designed a brain-reading device to hold simple conversations with "locked-in" patients that promises to transform the lives of people who are too disabled to communicate. Details of four patients who were able to communicate using what is being touted as a groundbreaking system were made public this week. From a report on MIT Technology Review: Now researchers in Europe say they've found out the answer after using a brain-computer interface to communicate with four people completely locked in after losing all voluntary movement due to Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In response to the statement "I love to live" three of the four replied yes. They also said yes when asked "Are you happy?" Designed by neuroscientist Niels Birbaumer, now at the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, the brain-computer interface fits on a person's head like a swimming cap and measures changes in electrical waves emanating from the brain and also blood flow using a technique known as near-infrared spectroscopy. To verify the four could communicate, Birbaumer's team asked patients, over the course of about 10 days of testing, to respond yes or no to statements such as "You were born in Berlin" or "Paris is the capital of Germany" by modulating their thoughts and altering the blood-flow pattern. The answers relayed through the system were consistent about 70 percent of the time, substantially better than chance.
Doctor: Paris is the capital of Germany
American patient: Yes
Doctor: Okay, this one can die
Sorry to be the skeptic, but 70% of the time isn't really that high. it means that the machine can read your thought 40% of the time and then the remaining 60% is a coin flip.
And this assumes no biases introduced into the process. We've seen in the past that ways of reading a paralyzed persons thought have turned out to either be scams, or well-intentioned people unconsciously affecting the results of the readings.
Now, I really hope we find ways to accomplish what this researchers are claiming, but I am skeptical.
As they hooked up the device and turned it on, I felt an immense sense of relief. Finally, after all these years of staring at the bleak beige ceiling tiles.
"Do you want to live?" the doctor asked.
In my mind, I shouted, "No!" No! A million times no! Release me from this dead body so that I can move on to the summerland! No! Let me die!
The doctor turned to my wife and told her, "He says that he wants to live! We should be able to keep him alive for another good 30 years."
I can't move my mouth, and I must scream.
Why use disabled people for testing? Use healthy ones, this is how you will know if it is working right or not.
I read once in the local paper an interview with a patient who had some sort of paralysis, (maybe coma?) that they unexpectedly recovered from.
The only thing I remember about the article was her description that:
It was just like dreaming when I was asleep. But when I woke up, I was originally scared, and afraid, and once I accepted it, my imagination started to take over. After a while, I was able to picture myself doing everything I wanted. Everything felt like a dream. And then one day, when I wasn't being busy, I was just relaxing, doing nothing, when I heard a faint ringing sound. And I just started to focus on my inner self. And then I realised that the body I identified with, wasn't my physical body, and that everything I was experiencing was inside my body, expanding and contracting, and like when you realise you're dreaming and you wake up; what I saw and felt around me started to dissolve, as I could feel parts of the world around me, my hearing waking up from it's own generations to taking the sounds of the world outside. And then, I slowly woke up. And like a dream, many bits I could remember simply started to disappear. And then I realised that that body I was used to the past few months, was in a lot better state than how this one's become.
From that account, it really pushed into me the notion that in such a state, like those good at visualizatoin, or meditation -- You basically just learn to re-create your own full reality. Hyper-real lucid dreaming. Better than reality, and more connected, as you realise that your perception of reality is all self-generated in your head, taking into advisement the pulses of electromagic radiation hitting our senses, make it into a pulse, and we create our own personal reality.
This bullshit about how we all have to grow old and die has got to fucking stop. Humanity need to quit dragging its feet and fucking cure aging. Our species has waited long enough. It is time for the dying to stop.
For god's sake, get on it!