ALS affects one in 50,000 every year
A fully paralysed man was able to speak to his family for the first time after receiving a brain microchip and apparently, he really wants a beer.
The unidentified German man, 36, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare disease that affects one in 50,000 people per year, back in 2015. As a result, the man was locked-in, which essentially means he was cognitively able and yet fully paralysed.
However seven years after being diagnosed with this life-changing disease, the man has been able to communicate with his family for the first time thanks to a microchip implant in his brain.
Now, he is able to communicate in full sentences, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications on March 22
Speaking on the recent study, Mariska Vansteensel, a researcher at the University Medical Center Utrecht, told Science.org: “People have really doubted whether this was even feasible.”
Doctors implanted two microchips measuring 1.5mm across into the man’s motor cortex where motion and movement are controlled.
Initially, scientists attempted to get the man to imagine physical movements which they believed would cause a reliable signal from his brain. Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
Next, researchers Ujwal Chaudhary and Niels Birbaumer then tried neurofeedback where the patient is shown their own brain activity in real-time in an effort to control it.
When the microchips recorded an increase in activity, the computer would play a rising audio tone. Naturally, a decrease resulted in a descending tone. Just two days later, the patient had learnt to control the frequency of the tone.
The scientists then employed a similar tactic to the one his family had been using before the man’s condition deteriorated. They had been holding up grids of letters set to a backdrop of four different colours and interpreting eye movement to determine his responses.
The man would hear the names of colours, to which he had to match with a block of letters through ascending and descending tones. Through this method, the man was eventually able to communicate in full sentences after continued therapy.
“Boys, it works so effortlessly,” the man said, according to MIT. Chaudhary is regularly with the man until late at night and often “past midnight” he reports that the man’s “last word was always ‘beer’.”
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