Japanese
TopicNeurocommunicator®,
a Brain Wave Driven Communication Tool
Want to express the feelings, even though I can’t speak or write
- this is a dream of a lot of people with severe motor disabilities. The Neurocommunicator, which has been developed by Dr. Hasegawa, is the system to make it happen.
This system is a kind of Brain-Machine Interface
(BMI), connecting the brain directly to the external devices with a small headgear. It decodes the user's intentions via brain waves in real time; it can effectively and quickly convey even a long message. Then, the selected message is expressed by the CG or Avatar Robot to the people around.
Dr. Hasegawa says Communication matters heavily for human beings as much as clothing, food and housing, or even more.
This tool is now on the practical test with the patients preparing for the actual utilization.
Chief Senior Researcher,
Ryohei P. Hasegawa, Ph.D.
How the research began
Dr. Hasegawa used to study on the neural basis of decision making in experimental animals.
But then eventually he became interested in the Brain-Machine Interface
(BMI), in which the brain was directly connected to the machine. The BMI, which became more popular in the world, motivated him to develop his own system to decode and utilize the brain information for clinical application.
Focus on the method to decode decision-making in the brain
Dr. Hasegawa had to think oppositely to decode the decision-making in the brain. Because the researchers conventionally focus on the average neuronal activities of a lot of trials during a cognitive task, which were compared each other. On the other hand, he focused on the prediction of the experimental condition from single-trial neuronal activities. His first achievement was to discover the relationship between the change of single-trial activity and that of task performance (published in Science 2000). Then his attempt was applied to predict the binary decision (published in Neural Networks 2006 & 2009). These successes gave Dr. Hasegawa chances to develop the BMI system not only for animals but also for human-beings.
Know the inclination by the brain wave, talk through the brain wave
In Japan, there are increasing numbers patients with severe motor disabilities.
Dr. Hasegawa developed the Neurocommunicator, a brainwave-based communication aid (press release at 2010/03/29). In this system, the user can express one of 512 messages with three consecutive selections with 8-option multiple-choices. It takes only 20-30 seconds.
One of the subjects says that it was easy and that I just needed to concentrate to select the message.
Dr. Hasegawa stood alongside to the patients when they could communicate many times. It was very special and moving moment. I realized once again that the communication is absolutely important for human. And I caught an impression that I have to make the best use of the latest technology again.
from The Japan Times
Neurocommunicator
- Going in the house
When we tested the Neurocommunicator in the patients’ house, there arose various problems.
Especially the noise from the electrical devices were critical. The brain waves are so small that Neurocommunicator is easily affected by the noise from those devices.
It is also important to improve the usability.
Neurocommunicator has got out from the lab and keeps development together with the cooperative companies to be the world’s most user-friendly apparatus.
To improve the quality of patient's life
There are the cases that medical treatments and rehabilitation would be difficult even with the latest medical studies. In these occasions, you may maintain or raise the quality of life with an equipment to complement the brain functions such as communication ability. Neurocommunicator is to be the first one.
The research for the future has also already started. The Neurocommunicator is going to control the robot. Patients will control the robot avatar freely by the brain wave, letting it go out for shopping as well as care themselves.
The neural decoding techniques will be used not only for the people with body disability but also for everybody.
Dr. Hasegawa says body-free era will come
. That means the future world of ‘thinking makes accesses to any services’ will come true.
