Yes. On August 6, the Department of Critical Care Medicine at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, in collaboration with Xi'an Jiaotong University's School of Mechanical Engineering, used brain-computer interface (BCI) technology to successfully enable a paraplegic aphasia sufferer to speak out! "The new technology will allow a paraplegic aphasic patient to say "hello"!
The 44-year-old male patient from Huining, Gansu Province, suffered a dislocation of the 5th and 6th cervical vertebrae as a result of an accidental fall from a high place half a month ago, resulting in damage to the high spinal cord. After timely surgical treatment at the local hospital, the cervical vertebrae have been successfully reset, but the function of the limbs has not yet been restored, in addition to the tracheotomy state accompanied by medullary palsy resulting in dysphagia and speech impediment, and the patient can only blink his eyes ("yes" or "no") to express to the doctor The patient can only express his/her demands to the doctor by blinking ("yes" or "no"). How can such patients express themselves better? This question has been troubling ICU staff at home and abroad.
Recently, Wang Xiaogang, director of the Department of Critical Care Medicine, Wang Gang, deputy director of the Department of Critical Care Medicine, and Xu Guanghua, professor of the School of Mechanical Engineering, fully demonstrated the application of BCI technology in critically ill patients, and formulated an individualized implementation plan for this patient. Subsequently, Director Wang further communicated with the patient and his family about the safety and feasibility of BCI technology on the basis of the supervising physician's full communication with the patient and his family about his condition.
After obtaining the consent of the patient and his family, Prof. Xu and his team came to the department in the morning of August 6 with the whole set of equipment, and used BCI technology to help the patient speak his mind.
After Dr. Zhao Yujie and Dr. Hou Yanli confirmed that the patient's ECG monitoring and airway intubation were safe, the nurse-in-charge and Prof. Xu's team put on the patient's brain cap. After Prof. Xu repeatedly checked to make sure the equipment was connected properly, the patient's first BCI test began, and the screen started counting down to 5,4,3,2,1.
After a brief guided tour of the program, the patient was able to "control" the equipment by looking at the computer screen. The patient in the hospital bed quietly looked at the computer screen constantly jumping characters, not long after the screen jumped out of the "hello" two words. Brain cap captured the patient's brain signal, through the computer processing and analysis, the patient finally BCI system "said" out "hello".
Expanded Information
Principle of BCI
According to the introduction, BCI is a kind of use of various electrodes to collect bioelectric signals generated by the brain activity, and through the computer to process and analyze the signals to decode the signals of movement, vision, etc., so as to realize the technology of human-computer interaction. Human-computer interaction technology. Depending on the method of collecting signals, BCI systems can be divided into invasive BCI and non-invasive BCI.
The former collects EEG signals directly from the surface of the cerebral cortex and requires surgical implantation of a chip, while the latter collects brainwave signals from the scalp through wearable devices such as an EEG cap and records an electroencephalography (EEG).The EEG reflects the electrical activity of the brain tissue and the functional state of the brain, through the analysis of the EEG, it is possible to detect and identify the intention of the person, and accordingly can realize the direct control of external devices.
Beijing evening new vision - let the voice "visible"! Aphasia patient expresses himself through brain-computer voice