A man who has lost all of his motor control is still able to communicate with his eyes. His family devised a sort of pen and paper scheme, which involves having these four columns. They point at yellow, he says yes, and then they list out each letter, and he says yes or no. The problem here is that he's aware that this ability to speak with his eyes is temporary. And so he asks, and the family realize that he wants some kind of strategy to go beyond this. A technique called auditory neuro fedback allows him to modulate activity by changing hi thoughts.
A groundbreaking new study claims to have found a way for a fully paralyzed person to communicate entirely via thought. But as we learned in an episode earlier this year, the scientists behind it have a checkered past.
This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Tori Dominguez and Laura Bullard, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
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