If we could read her mind ...

Can brainwaves be harnessed to help the severely disabled communicate? A team of UVic researchers is determined to find out

by Valerie Shore, The Ring, 2001-09-20

University of Victoria biology professor Nigel Livingston (left) shares some computer time with 17-year-old Claire Minkley and her dad John at their Oak Bay, B.C., home on March 9, 2001. Claire is wearing a Cyberlink system headband that helps her communicate. (CP PHOTO, Diana Nethercott)

Seventeen-year-old Claire Minkley loves poetry, physics, swimming and going to restaurants for a meal. She’s also a straight-A student who is completing Grade 12 and plans to attend university.

Yet Claire is no ordinary teenager.

She’s the remarkable young woman at the centre of an ambitious University of Victoria-based research project that may one day allow her and other severely disabled people to communicate more effectively and independently — using a system that will literally read their minds.

Since it was formed in 1999, the group has tackled a half dozen or so small projects. But the “Claire project,” says Livingston, has turned into a full-fledged research effort, involving scores of people on and off-campus. “It’s a really exciting project from an academic point of view, and incredibly rewarding from a human point of view because we’re working with such an exceptional individual,” he says.

Claire has a genetic condition similar to cerebral palsy and requires a wheelchair, extensive posture support and assistance with every aspect of daily living. She’s unable to speak, and because she has poor muscle control she can’t write, use a mouse or keep her eyes focused on a book or computer screen for very long.

Instead, Claire uses her eyes to indicate choices and her right hand to point to areas on a letter board to form words. The process, which requires a lot of help from an aide or her parents, is very tiring and slow — yielding only about 20 words an hour.

At school, Claire learned to solve complex problems in her head and to speed-read large portions of text at a glance. “She’s always been very bright and can get to the core of an idea very quickly,” says her father, John. He still chuckles at her response to a book report question asking for the message behind Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Claire’s succinct answer: ‘Learn from your mistakes.’

Claire’s next goal is a degree in physics and astronomy at UVic. To do that in a timely way, says her father, she’ll need a more sophisticated communication system. The UVATT team is investigating the use of advanced brain-computer interface technology that would allow Claire to communicate by controlling her brainwave patterns. “It’s well-known that the human brain routinely gives off low-frequency electrical signals,” says Livingston. “If Claire can teach herself to generate signals at certain frequencies, it may be possible to convert them into an efficient communication system.”

The technology at the heart of the project is a device known as Cyberlink, developed for the U.S. Air Force to help pilots operate other instruments while flying their planes. It responds to signals produced by muscles or the brain, notes Bill Hook, a research associate in Livingston’s lab and a UVATT member.

“You and I could use this machine very quickly simply by raising our eyebrows or grinning, but Claire has almost no control over her muscles,” says Hook, a retired electronics engineer. Claire’s best hope, he says, lies with repetitive electrical pulses produced by the brain known as “periodic signals.”

“There’s very strong evidence that people generate periodic signals with durations of up to 10 seconds,” says Hook. “The question is: can they be generated at will and are they strong enough to do the job?”

The basic Cyberlink system uses two sensors on the forehead that are held in place with a headband. Detected brain signals are amplified, digitized, and run through signal processing software. “What we’re doing is further processing the signal to reject noise from spastic muscle movement and other brain activity,” says Hook.

The UVATT team is also placing sensors elsewhere on Claire’s head to see if there’s a better site for signal detection. Meanwhile, the challenge for Claire’s is to control the strength of her brain’s periodic signals. To assist her, the team is working on an auditory feedback device that will emit sounds corresponding to each signal frequency.

“If she can train herself to generate at least two sounds, then she’s on her way to communicating,” says Livingston. Whether the result will be a form of “on-off switch” or a more elaborate morse code system is unknown at this point. “This is a long-term project,” says Livingston, who visualizes Claire one day wearing a headset hooked up to a brainwave detection unit and a computer. “Maybe the output could go to a voice synthesizer, so she could essentially talk to us. That’s our dream.”

No doubt that’s Claire’s dream too. When asked how she feels about being part of this extraordinary project, she replies: “Pretend that you are playing the piano and you can’t make any sound. This is how I feel. Thank you so much for trying to put sound to my music.”