Man With Locked-In Syndrome Asks for Beer with BCI

After losing control of his eye movement, the man was left with just neural signals to communicate.

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Locked-in syndrome is a rare neurological disorder in which a person experiences total paralysis, usually with the exception of eye movement. A recent arsTECHNICA article discussed a novel brain-computer interface that’s helping such patients communicate via brain activity. The article discusses a 36-year-old German man who was diagnosed with progressive muscle atrophy back in 2015, a variation of ALS that affects motor neurons. In less than a year, he had lost the ability to walk and communicate verbally, and was dependent on artificial ventilation and a feeding tube.

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