PS3 parts help paralyzed patients
“Your brain works 100 per cent. You’re completely coherent. You just can’t move,” says UVic student Ashkaughn Forghani.
Forghani is referring to the disease known as Locked-in Syndrome (LIS), which, like Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS), effectively separates the brain from the body.
The brain is conscious and capable, but can’t make the body do the simplest things, sometimes including breathing. Ordinary tasks remain very difficult.
When French journalist Jean-Dominique Bauby had a stroke in 1995 that left him unable to control any part of his body except for his left eyelid, he wrote a book using a painstaking process called partner-assisted scanning. This involves a helper listing off options (in Bauby’s case, letters of the alphabet) until the paralyzed person blinks, or otherwise indicates a choice.
Forghani, who is transferring from his third year in biological psychology to visual arts, engaged similar methods while volunteering in neurological rehabilitation at Victoria General Hospital this year. He describes holding up books and asking the person to blink to tell him which one to read.
New technology is making it easier for people to overcome the physical limitations created by these conditions.
People with full-body paralysis can now draw art on computers. Specialized programs with hover-to-click functionality and on-screen keyboards may allow them to type and surf the Internet using simple, home-assembled, open-source equipment. Anything accomplished by manipulating a cursor on a screen suddenly seems possible for people who can only move their eyes.
One of these new technologies is the EyeWriter, which allows paralyzed artists to draw using only eye movements. When Forghani learned about the glasses after reading the website eyewriter.org, he says he had to build them.
Eyewriter.org offers DIY instructions for EyeWriter glasses, listing only five components most people should be able to source locally and assemble by hand, including a pair of sunglasses and a hacked PlayStation Eye. The creators provide the accompanying software program for free, so that anyone can download it and build the hardware.
Forghani spent about $100 (the site suggests $50) and 20 hours over three months building his first set of EyeWriter glasses. Most of the time it took him to build that first set was spent reading the instructions; now, he says he would only need two hours per pair.
While Forghani says original EyeWriter prototypes frequently burned out, he has made a modification he plans to share with the creators, so others can make better hardware.
“I set up the lights so they’re not attached to anything and can move independently,” explains Forghani. “So they don’t keep breaking anymore.”
Dr. Paul Winston of VGH neuro-rehab is impressed with Forghani’s initiative, which he says he’ll implement for spinal chord injury patients.
“He’s already identified a niche for himself,” says Winston. “All the software is free shareware, so it really expands the capabilities.”
“It’s cool because it’s a way you can change someone’s life with something so simple,” says Forghani. “You just go and make these glasses, find someone who’s paralyzed and give it to them, and their life is changed.”
Check out a video of how the glasses work here:
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