This is Ouija board pseudoscience until proven otherwise. The scientist behind it is already disgraced. If there is any element of "assistance" in interpreting the locked-in patient's brain waves, the wishful thinking of the assistant likely fudges the results to create a fake message, exactly like an Ouija board. Scams like this pop up every few years, preying on desperate, sad people. See "facilitated communication".
Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
11–20 of 70 posts
Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
#12The study comes in the context of past findings of serious misconduct against Birbaumer and Chaudhary. The findings concerned the data and analysis in two previous papers published in PLoS Biology. The two articles, subsequently retracted, also concerned the use of brain activity to decode the thoughts of completely locked-in patients. The German research agency, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) found that the s…
Reading about the guy that became unlocked (it wasnt ALS) it always haunts me that it took him a couple days to even know he was locked in At first he thought the nurse was just being unsocial when they came to do routine stuff with him! and then he realized he was in spectator mode Its going to be really hard for a lot of people when they find out whats going on with their locked in or previously locked in loved one…
What was his name?
Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
#13Interesting, the patient only has Yes/No control, and that's then used to spell whole words and sentences.
There is a supplementary movie to the study showing this in action [0], it's slow but quite impressive when the patient spells out "Jungs es funktioniert gerade so mühelos"/"Boys right now its working so effortlessly".
That particular session came out at 171 characters in 157 minutes, 1.1 characters/minute.
[0] https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs414...
Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
#14Fascinating. I wonder if nerds like us could optimize the „bitrate“ of this. Lvng out mddl vcls is one vry smpl optn, fr exmpl. There must be even better ways, if you consider the frequency of words, for example. I wouldnt be surprised if one could reduce bits needed to express a sentence by 90%, if those numerologists that proved their worth with predicting Wordle solutions had a look at that.
vcls?
i read it as vocals and said to myself, "poor word choice". vowels are vocalized I guess?
Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
#15The study comes in the context of past findings of serious misconduct against Birbaumer and Chaudhary. The findings concerned the data and analysis in two previous papers published in PLoS Biology. The two articles, subsequently retracted, also concerned the use of brain activity to decode the thoughts of completely locked-in patients. The German research agency, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) found that the s…
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Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
#16This is Ouija board pseudoscience until proven otherwise. The scientist behind it is already disgraced. If there is any element of "assistance" in interpreting the locked-in patient's brain waves, the wishful thinking of the assistant likely fudges the results to create a fake message, exactly like an Ouija board. Scams like this pop up every few years, preying on desperate, sad people. See "facilitated communication…
There are over a dozen people involved with this, disregarding them all because of one controversial incident with one of them feels a bit extreme. In terms of methodology it does not strike me as very Ouija boardy as all patient input is in the form of Yes/No responses [0];
> We also validated the Yes/No responses in a question paradigm, in which the answers were assumed to be known to the patient.
> Finally, in an auditory speller paradigm, the patient could select letters and words using the previously trained Yes/No approach.
As somebody working in the German medical sector, I'm also pretty certain that the BfArM ain't casually greenlighting scam brain surgeries/implants. Nor am I sure how any of the researchers are supposed to scam the patient, or their family, with this?
Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
#17This is Ouija board pseudoscience until proven otherwise. The scientist behind it is already disgraced. If there is any element of "assistance" in interpreting the locked-in patient's brain waves, the wishful thinking of the assistant likely fudges the results to create a fake message, exactly like an Ouija board. Scams like this pop up every few years, preying on desperate, sad people. See "facilitated communication…
There are over a dozen people involved with this, disregarding them all because of one controversial incident with one of them feels a bit extreme. In terms of methodology it does not strike me as very Ouija boardy as all patient input is in the form of Yes/No responses [0]; > We also validated the Yes/No responses in a question paradigm, in which the answers were assumed to be known to the patient. > Finally, in an…
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Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
#18Interesting, the patient only has Yes/No control, and that's then used to spell whole words and sentences. There is a supplementary movie to the study showing this in action [0], it's slow but quite impressive when the patient spells out "Jungs es funktioniert gerade so mühelos"/"Boys right now its working so effortlessly". That particular session came out at 171 characters in 157 minutes, 1.1 characters/minute. [0]…
Thanks for the video! 2:27 shows the process. They go letter by letter in order and then ask yes or no. I think asking about the next letter based on previous letters would vastly improved the speed
Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
#19This is Ouija board pseudoscience until proven otherwise. The scientist behind it is already disgraced. If there is any element of "assistance" in interpreting the locked-in patient's brain waves, the wishful thinking of the assistant likely fudges the results to create a fake message, exactly like an Ouija board. Scams like this pop up every few years, preying on desperate, sad people. See "facilitated communication…
There are over a dozen people involved with this, disregarding them all because of one controversial incident with one of them feels a bit extreme. In terms of methodology it does not strike me as very Ouija boardy as all patient input is in the form of Yes/No responses [0]; > We also validated the Yes/No responses in a question paradigm, in which the answers were assumed to be known to the patient. > Finally, in an…
Yeah, less than half of sessions yielded "intelligible" output.
From that, we learn that there's indeed an element of interpretation, as was seen with Koko the gorilla and the claims that she could talk, when in fact she was just spouting gibberish that her handlers would interpret.
I anticipate more scientists are going to become disgraced as this study is scrutinized by peers.
But, hey, I hope I'm wrong. It would indeed be nice to talk to locked-in loved ones.
Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)
#20Interesting, the patient only has Yes/No control, and that's then used to spell whole words and sentences. There is a supplementary movie to the study showing this in action [0], it's slow but quite impressive when the patient spells out "Jungs es funktioniert gerade so mühelos"/"Boys right now its working so effortlessly". That particular session came out at 171 characters in 157 minutes, 1.1 characters/minute. [0]…
Thanks for the video! 2:27 shows the process. They go letter by letter in order and then ask yes or no. I think asking about the next letter based on previous letters would vastly improved the speed
Yes! Binary search through the alphabet. Or, better yet, Hoffman encode common German words!