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Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

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Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#21

Post by thaumasiotes »

freeflight wrote: post #16
exo-pla-net wrote: post #11

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…

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…

> 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.

One controversial incident? This is an extremely common type of scam. There's always somebody claiming they can speak to your comatose or deceased loved one, and they're always scamming you. No, the coma communicators aren't more reliable than the ghost communicators. No, there is no reason you would ever expect someone in this field to be telling the truth, particularly not when they've been caught running the same scam in the past.

Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#22

Post by ManuelKiessling »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #21
freeflight wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. One controversial incident? This is an extremely common type of scam. There's always somebody claiming they can speak to your comatose or deceased loved one, and they're always scamming you. No, the coma communicators aren't more reliable than the ghost communicators. N…

The guy is not in coma – did you even read the paper?

Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#23

Post by thaumasiotes »

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #22
thaumasiotes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. One controversial incident? This is an extremely common type of scam. There's always somebody claiming they can speak to your comatose or deceased loved one, and they're always scamming you. No, the coma communicators aren't more reliable than the ghost communicators. N…

The guy is not in coma – did you even read the paper?

He is in a coma in the sense that's relevant here:

> the patient, who was unable to move any muscles or even open his eyes

Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#24

Post by bnegreve »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #19
freeflight wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I am also skeptic of the whole thing, but they say this:

> After 12 further days, the patient was able to reliably increase or decrease his neural activity to hit one of two “target” tones.

Isn't that evidence that this is not random noise?

The only thing that could be left to human interpretation is the "increase of activity" (I'm assuming "activity" is a signal with high dimensionality). But it is easy enough to build some metric, and demonstrate the answers are not random.

I have just enough faith in peer reviewing to hope that the paper would have been rejected without this experiment.

Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#25

Post by Kliment »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #19
freeflight wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

The full event streams have been published this time around, including the failed sessions. I recommend reading the article and watching the videos of the system operating - they have a video of the input calibration/training, and another video of the longest session. The sessions are few and many days apart, and not all of them demonstrate successful control, but on the days where the patient can successfully drive the system there is no doubt of the communication method's authenticity, and the researchers have no input or interpretation capability.

The previous controversy around the researchers is not about them scamming patients, it's about them publishing only the positive results of their work and not disclosing negative results, making the average success rate appear better. This is one reason they publish full event streams and list days with no attempts and failed attempts extensively in this paper. The code has also been published, and the raw potential recordings are available on request. I had a careful read and I can't find anything methodologically problematic in this publication. When you watch the video, be aware this is the longest and most successful session, and the researchers made this very clear.

Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#26

Post by Kliment »

axiosgunnar wrote: post #4

Fascinating. 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.

There are many ways to improve the speed and accuracy, but it's really important in settings like these to not make changes until the input method is fully reliable, because there's the risk of complete loss of communication.

Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#27

Post by bj-rn »

arwhatever wrote: post #7
axiosgunnar wrote: post #4

Fascinating. 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?

A "false friend" maybe. Vowel translates to Vokal in German for example.

Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#28

Post by kowlo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #9
staticassertion wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally my greatest nightmare scenario. Nothing scares me more. Similarly, the jaunt is sort of the extreme version of this, and I try not to think about it x_x Sometimes I have sleep paralysis (very rarely) and it's the worst, scariest feeling.

Sleep paralysis is scary. I haven't had it in 30 years, but I remember how shocking it was the first time. Curiously, in my case I also remember distinctly giving up and thinking "well alright, guess I'm going to die, wow" and being calm about it. Then the paralysis wore off.

I have sleep paralysis every night when I try going to sleep, and in the mornings when I try to wake up.

Normally a few times in a row. I don’t sleep much because of it.

Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#29

Post by a-dub »

exo-pla-net wrote: post #11

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…

monkeys have been moving cursors around on screens (or more elaborate physical or virtual effectors) using cortical implants for nearly 20 years now. the experiments that are published when they do this are well designed. target placements are randomized, task performance establishes irrefutable control- sometimes believed to be as a result of learning how to modulate neural activity to drive the system, and sometimes believed to be a result of passive listening (and learning) of non-adapted neural activity.

it is likely very possible to do what they have claimed to have done.

the big problem has often been intersession stability. some days are good, some days are bad and some days don't work at all.

Re: Completely Locked-In Patients Can Communicate, Thanks to a Brain Implant (BCI)

#30

Post by dalbasal »

a-dub wrote: post #29
exo-pla-net wrote: post #11

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…

monkeys have been moving cursors around on screens (or more elaborate physical or virtual effectors) using cortical implants for nearly 20 years now. the experiments that are published when they do this are well designed. target placements are randomized, task performance establishes irrefutable control- sometimes believed to be as a result of learning how to modulate neural activity to drive the system, and sometime…

...those are the days that never end.
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