If you want to see the actual video (worth watching)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/31/60minutes/main4560940.shtml
[program segment video at url]
(CBS) Once in a while, we run across a science story that is hard to believe
until you see it. That's how we felt about this story when we first saw
human beings operating computers, writing e-mails, and driving wheelchairs
with nothing but their thoughts.
Quietly in a number of laboratories, an astounding technology is developing
that directly connects the human brain to a computer. It's like a sudden
leap in human evolution - a leap that could one day help paralyzed people to
walk again and amputees to move bionic limbs. As correspondent Scott Pelley
reports, the connection has already been made for a few people, and for them
it has been life changing.
Scott Mackler was a husband, father and successful neuroscientist when he
received perhaps the worst news imaginable. At the age of 40, he could run a
marathon in three and a half hours, but it was about that time he discovered
he had ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease.
His brain was losing its connection to virtually every muscle in his body.
The near-total paralysis would also stop his lungs. He didn't want to live
on a ventilator, so nine years ago he recorded this message for his two
sons.
"I know the future holds lot of love and joy and pride and that life goes on
and I'll be watching you along the way and I love you very much and I'll see
ya," he said in a home video.
Today, Scott Mackler's mind is sharp as ever, but his body has failed.
Doctors call it "locked in" syndrome. Scott and his wife Lynn learned to
communicate with about the only thing he has left, eye movement.
To signal "yes," Lynn says Scott looks at her; to signal "no," he looks
away.
But recently Scott found a new voice. "Can everyone hear the PC? I apologize
for the quality of the voice," he asked in writing.
Scott wrote these words, one letter at a time, with nothing but his thoughts
and the help of what's called a brain computer interface or "BCI." He wears
a cap that picks up the electrical activity of his brain and allows him to
select letters simply by thinking about them. Then the computer turns his
sentences into speech.
"I hate being helpless and when other people put words in my mouth," he
wrote.
"Well, this is a very unusual interview for 60 Minutes. We've done something
we never, ever do, and that is we've submitted the questions in advance
because it takes Scott a little while to put the answers together using the
BCI device," Pelley remarks. "Scott, I understand that earlier in the
progression of this disease you said that, at the point you had to go on a
ventilator you didn't wanna go on anymore, but today you are on a
ventilator. And I'm curious about what changed your mind?"
"Because I can still communicate," Scott replied, with the help of the BCI
device.
It isn't fast. It takes 20 seconds or so to select each letter. Scott told
60 Minutes it took him about an hour to write the answers to our 16
questions. But he writes well enough to continue his research and manage his
lab at the University of Pennsylvania, where he still goes to work everyday.
"You use this system even to text your sons, for example. And I wonder what
it would mean to your life today if the system somehow was taken away from
you?" Pelley asks.
Scott says he couldn't work with BCI.
Asked what it has meant to their relationship, Scott's wife Lynn tells
Pelley, "Well, he's happier. He can communicate with not just us, but with
the world. This gave him his independence. His working, intellectual,
scientist independence back."
The system was developed by neuroscientist Dr. Jonathan Wolpaw at New York
State's Wadsworth Center.
To understand how the BCI works, Pelley asked researcher Theresa Vaughan to
hook him up to the BCI device.
"And you'll see there are little white disks scattered around on your head,"
Dr. Wolpaw explained.
Those disks are electrodes that pick up the faint electrical activity that
brain cells create when they communicate with each other. Vaughan put a
conductive gel on top of Pelley's scalp to help the electrodes pick up the
signals.
Pelley was thinking of the letters of a word that only he knew. Every time
the computer flashed the correct letter on the screen, he silently thought
to himself, 'That's it, that's the one.' That feeling of recognition set off
a unique electrical pattern in his brain, which the computer picked up.
It worked the first time Pelley tried it, without a single mistake, spelling
out "THOUGHT" with the help of BCI.
"You know, I can imagine some people watching this interview are thinking to
themselves, 'Wait a minute, they're connecting the brain to a computer.' Are
we moving in the direction of reading people's thoughts? Are we, is this
mind control around the corner?" Pelley asks.
"No, No it is not - it is certainly not mind control and it's different from
reading people's thoughts. And it's important to realize this requires the
cooperation of the person," Wolpaw explains.
As remarkable as this is, some scientists believe this technology is
limited, because putting electrodes on top of the scalp is like listening to
a symphony from the street outside the concert hall. So what would happen if
the electrodes were inside the brain?
That's what they're doing at the University of Pittsburgh, implanting
electrodes inside the brains of monkeys. Andy Schwartz, a neuroscientist at
the university, implanted a grid of electrodes. It's tiny, but there are 100
sensors, each listening to a different brain cell, or neuron.
It's like listening to the symphony of the brain, but now sitting in the
front row. Schwartz has been decoding that language by watching the monkey's
movement and recording the corresponding signals in its brain.
Asked what that tells him, Schwartz says, "So there's a relationship between
how fast the neuron fires and the way the animal moves its hand. And we're
trying to understand that relationship so that if we see a neuron firing we
can say, 'Ah, the animal's about to make this kind of movement.'"
Once Schwartz started to figure out that relationship, he was able to
connect the monkey's brain directly to a robotic arm. Within days, the
monkey operated the arm as if it was his own. "The monkey has both arms
restrained. And we're recording brain signals from its brain and it's using
those brain signals to operate this entire arm," Schwartz explains. "As well
as the gripper"
Schwartz says the monkey is operating the robotic arm with nothing but his
thoughts. Asked what the chances are that a human would be able to do the
same thing, he says, "Oh, we think a human being could do much better."
Cathy Hutchinson is well on her way to finding out: she's among the first
humans to have her brain directly wired to a computer. Years ago, Cathy
suffered a stroke that left her mentally sharp but trapped inside a
paralyzed body and unable to speak, "locked in" like Scott Mackler.
Three years ago, Cathy volunteered to have the same kind of sensors Pelley
saw in the monkeys implanted in her motor cortex, which controls movement
and is located right on the surface of the brain. The sensors connect to the
computer through a plug on her head. The system is called "Braingate" and it
was created by a team led by Brown University neuroscientist John Donoghue.
"If you look at this square each one of these little black boxes is the
electrical signal coming from one electrode in the brain," he explains.
Each one of the little black boxes is a neuron firing. "It's its electrical
potential. It lets out a 1/1000th of a second pulse," Donoghue explains.
Asked how well we understand this language, Donoghue says, "We have a
somewhat of an understanding. We know that there's a general pattern of, for
example, left/right, up/down, even fast or slow."
Dr. Leigh Hochberg of Massachusetts General Hospital is leading the clinical
trial. Pelley watched as Cathy showed what she can do.
She was able to move a cursor with nothing but her mind. "She's thinking
about the movement of her hand, and she's moving the cursor much as if she
had her hand on a mouse," Hochberg explains.
So if a paralyzed patient thinks to move his or her left arm, Donoghue says
the brain fires those neurons, even though the arm doesn't move. "It's very
surprising. It fires, even though you're not moving," he says.
Moving the cursor with her mind is not as fluid or direct as using a mouse.
While 60 Minutes was there, the cursor meandered a bit, sometimes overshot,
but Cathy always hit her target in the end: clicking the cursor on a logo to
play music.
"That's pretty amazing. And so, if Cathy can control a cursor, she can
control anything a computer is connected to?" Pelley asks.
"That's the goal," Hochberg says.
"The lights, the temperature in the room, even, even a wheelchair at some
point," Pelley adds.
In fact, Cathy has already driven a wheelchair. They haven't let her ride in
it yet for her own safety, but with monkeys adopting robot arms and a
completely paralyzed person driving a chair, imagine where this could be
headed.
Donoghue envisions this technology will go beyond helping people
communicate.
He believes that amputees will one day be using BCIs to control robotic
arms, and those with paralysis will be able to move their own arms and legs
again. "In spinal cord injury, that cable that connects the brain to the
spinal cord is broken. We can reconnect that brain, not to the spinal cord,
but directly out to the muscles with a little computer that's making up for
all the lost parts. And we'll see people be able to do things like reach
out, hold onto a cup, bring the cup to their mouth and have a sip of water,"
he says.
As a neuroscientist, Scott Mackler also believes that day will come. His
skullcap interface is a machine that has given him back his humanity. He's
continued to publish scientific papers and to speak his mind. "Live life to
the fullest. My wife and I now speak everyday of how we have no regrets," he
says.
As our interview ended, Scott Mackler asked Pelley to play a PowerPoint
presentation he made to make sure that he got the last word.
"So I'm going to roll that now and see what he has to say," Pelley remarked.
"Please don't think that I'm an inspiration, because anyone could do what
I've done," Scott said.
"Scott keeps talking about not being courageous. I don't particularly think
that is true," Pelley commented.
"I don't either," Scott's wife Lynn added. "I think he's pretty brave."
Nov. 2, 2008
Produced by Denise Schrier Cetta
© MMVIII, CBS Worldwide Inc.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/31/60minutes/main4560940.shtml
—
Bill Daul
Chief Collaboration Officer
NextNow Collaboratory: a synergistic web of
relationships focused on transforming the present
http://www.human-landscaping.com/nextnow
http://www.nextnow.net — NN Network Blog
http://www.nextnow.org — NN Collaboratory Blog
==================================
"Play with boundaries, not within."
