28 Jul, 2010 in
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Boosting Selenium Intake May Lower Bladder Cancer Risk, Particularly in WomenBy
Kelli Miller Stacy
WebMD Health News
Reviewed By
Laura J. Martin, MD
Aug. 31, 2010 -- Adding more selenium to your diet may lower your[...]
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Technology Helps Severely Disabled People Take Their Noses to Drive Energetic Wheelchairs, Write Text Messages By Reviewed By July 26, 2010 — Israeli scientists possess developed a device that allows severely disabled people to sniff to precisely control objects such as wheelchairs as well as personal digital assistants, a recent study says. The nasal-mask device works so well that disabled people who can’t move at all can learn to write text messages as well as drive energetic wheelchairs by sniffing, researchers report in the July issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Noam Sobel, PhD, of the department of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, as well as colleagues set out to find a way to allow people with disabilities ranging from quadriplegia to “locked-in syndrome” to learn how to control devices with their noses just as they would using a joystick or computer mouse.
The Weizmann Institute has filed for a patent on sniff-controlled technology, which the researchers report as a likely conflict of interest. The researchers built a “sniff controller” that measures changes in nasal pressure, which occur when the cushioned palate (the cushioned area at the back of the roof of the mouth) is repositioned. The device was tested on wholesome as well as disabled people. The researchers report that sniffing can be done with precision, as well as that it requires precise movements of the cushioned palate, which receives signals from cranial nerves that often are not affected by paralytic injury as well as other disorders. ‘Sniffing’ StudyThe study involved 96 wholesome as well as 15 severely disabled people who were taught to sniff in dissimilar ways to send various electrical signals to a controller. For example, two in-sniffs meant forward, as well as two out-sniffs backward. Various sniffing sequences allowed participants to turn as well as steer a wheelchair. In the end, a quadriplegic person could take the sniff controller to drive an energetic wheelchair with precision after only 15 minutes of practice, the study says. The researchers report that wholesome people played computer games with the device as adeptly as they may with a mouse, joystick, or other controller. Quadriplegic patients managed to take computers to write text messages as well as learned to control energetic wheelchairs as well as the wholesome people using part in the research, the study says. People who are “locked in” — completely paralyzed but cognitively intact — as well as were capable to take the device to make text messages. One woman communicated for the earliest time in seven months, as well as another wrote for the earliest time in a decade, the researchers say. Researchers say the device now awaits testing in disorders of consciousness, including the vegetative state. SOURCES: News release, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. |
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