Martin Mireles has been paralyzed from the neck down for nearly twenty years. He can maneuver a mobility chair by steering it with his mouth, but a new magnetic tongue stud developed by researchers at the Northwestern University School of Medicine makes it a lot easier:
Link -via Gizmodo | Photo: Steve Kagan/NYT
Mr. Mireles, 37, tested the equipment one recent afternoon by guiding a wheelchair through an obstacle course lined with trash cans. Mouth closed, he shifted the magnet to travel forward and backward, left and right.[...]
To operate the system, the user wears a headset with sensors that pick up magnetic signals from the tongue ring. Moving the tongue to the mouth’s upper left corner, for instance, moves the wheelchair forward. (The researchers hope that in the future, touching each tooth could signal a different command, from turning on the television to answering the phone to opening a door.)
Researchers decided to use the tongue because they wanted to take advantage of some of the functions a severely disabled person still had. The tongue does not tire easily, they said, and it is not usually affected by a spinal cord injury because it is directly connected to the brain through a cranial nerve.
Link -via Gizmodo | Photo: Steve Kagan/NYT
The well-known neuroscientist and author Jill Bolte-Taylor, author of "My Stroke of Insight" claims in her book that after losing the vast majority of her brain function she had to constantly challenge herself, never settling for the easy road. She lost half of her brain and the majority of her understanding of neuroscience along with it. After her stroke she couldn't even talk straight, let alone present a lecture, but after years of self-imposed CIT, she was able to right a book detailing in neuroscientific terms, her experience and her recovery.