Fully paralyzed patients can communicate

A completely locked-in person, someone who is conscious and cognitively able but fully paralyzed is able for the first time to communicate in full sentences.

The study, published on Tuesday in Nature Communications, provides the first example of a patient in a fully locked-in state communicating at length with the outside world.

Medics implanted two microchips, each measuring about 1.5mm across, in the patient’s motor cortex, the region at the top of the human brain that is responsible for controlling movement.

When the implanted electrodes in the man’s brain recorded an increase in activity, a computer would play a rising audio tone. A fall in brain activity would play a descending tone.

Within two days, the patient learned to control the frequency of the tone, researchers said.

Before his condition progressed, family members would hold up a grid of letters against a background of four colours. Family members would point to each colour section and row, and interpret any eye movement as a “yes”.

The researchers introduced a software to mimic this technique. The man would hear the words of a color. For example “yellow” or “blue” to pick a block of letters from which to select.

He would then be played individual letters and use a rising or descending tone to either select or dismiss each. This way the man learned to communicate entire sentences, the researchers said.

The results hold potential promise for patients in similarly unresponsive situations, including minimally conscious and comatose states, as well as the rising number of people diagnosed with ALS worldwide every year.