Nothing short of revolutionary

Vansteesel cautions that while the device is working well for Harrell, there’s no guarantee it will work as well, or as long, for other people with ALS. Over the last decade, she has worked with a woman with ALS who used a fully implanted device to communicate using “brain clicks”—cursor clicks made using brain activity. The woman used her BCI for seven years, but it stopped working toward the end of that period, apparently due to brain degeneration. At any rate, not everyone with ALS will be willing to undergo invasive brain surgery, says Jane Huggins, who is developing noninvasive BCIs at the University of Michigan and was not involved in the trial. “Long-term, independent use with efficient and accurate communication is kind of the holy grail of BCI,” she says.

“But we have been finding a consistent aversion to hospital stays among people with progressive conditions like ALS. ” Harrell, however, calls the device “nothing short of revolutionary. ” “This has allowed me to keep working and earn money and insurance for my family. This is reconnecting me with friends and family who are too shy or too afraid to come over and not be able to understand me,” Harrell says. “With my seven-year-old daughter, I am able to create a bond that I wasn’t before able to forge.

Now I can read to them and help them sharpen their own reading skills. By doing so, I am able to share the responsibility of parenting with my wife, who does so much caregiving for me and also our daughter. ” Stavisky and his colleagues hope to improve the device further still. “We’re never satisfied,” he says. One aim is to eventually restore Harrell’s “full voice.

” They are working on a “brain-to-voice” system that could directly decode brain activity to a speaking voice, complete with natural-sounding cadence, inflection and intonation—a voice that could sound happy, angry, or sarcastic, for example. “I was quietly confident that I could get some personal benefit from the system,” says Harrell.