In a first, brain implant lets man with complete paralysis spell out thoughts: ‘I love my cool son.’
        
            By Kelly Servick, 
                Science
             | 03. 22. 2022
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            In its final stages, the neurological disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) can bring extreme isolation. People lose control of their muscles, and communication may become impossible. But with the help of an implanted device that reads his brain signals, a man in this “complete” locked-in state could select letters and form sentences, researchers report this week.
“People have really doubted whether this was even feasible,” says Mariska Vansteensel, a brain-computer interface researcher at the University Medical Center Utrecht who was not involved in the study, published in Nature Communications. If the new spelling system proves reliable for all people who are completely locked in—and if it can be made more efficient and affordable—it might allow thousands of people to reconnect to their families and care teams, says Reinhold Scherer, a neural engineer at the University of Essex.
ALS destroys the nerves that control movement, and most patients die within 5 years of diagnosis. When a person with ALS can no longer speak, they can use an eye-tracking camera to select letters on a screen. Later in the disease’s...
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
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[OHSU News/Christine Torres Hicks]
On September 30th, a team of 21 scientists from Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) published a significant paper in Nature Communications, with a scientifically accurate but, to many, somewhat abstruse headline:
Induction of experimental cell division to generate cells with reduced chromosome ploidy
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