|
Individuals with severe disabilities can write text and drive electric wheelchairs by "sniffing," according to a study [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online, July 26, 2010].
Noam Sobel, PhD, of the Department of Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, and colleagues surmised that people with disabilities ranging from quadriplegia to "locked-in syndrome"-individuals who are completely paralyzed but cognitively intact-might retain the ability to sniff with precision.
Sniffing requires precise movements of the soft palate, which receives signals from cranial nerves that are often unaffected by paralytic injury and disorders. The researchers built a "sniff-controller" that measures changes in nasal pressure that occur when the soft palate is repositioned, and tested the interface with both healthy and disabled participants. The authors reported that healthy individuals played computer games with the device as adeptly as with a mouse or joystick, and could navigate a sniff-controlled electric wheelchair along a complex, 115-foot path.
Quadriplegic participants were able to use computers to write text, and navigated the electric wheelchair as capably as the healthy participants. Most promisingly, according to the authors, "locked-in" individuals were able to use the device to produce text, including one woman who communicated for the first time in 7 months and another who wrote for the first time in 10 years.
|