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Reached Via a Mind-Reading Device, Deeply Paralyzed Patients Say They Want to Live (technologyreview.com) 180

Posted by msmash from the groundbreaking dept.
Neuroscientists have designed a brain-reading device to hold simple conversations with "locked-in" patients that promises to transform the lives of people who are too disabled to communicate. Details of four patients who were able to communicate using what is being touted as a groundbreaking system were made public this week. From a report on MIT Technology Review: Now researchers in Europe say they've found out the answer after using a brain-computer interface to communicate with four people completely locked in after losing all voluntary movement due to Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In response to the statement "I love to live" three of the four replied yes. They also said yes when asked "Are you happy?" Designed by neuroscientist Niels Birbaumer, now at the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva, the brain-computer interface fits on a person's head like a swimming cap and measures changes in electrical waves emanating from the brain and also blood flow using a technique known as near-infrared spectroscopy. To verify the four could communicate, Birbaumer's team asked patients, over the course of about 10 days of testing, to respond yes or no to statements such as "You were born in Berlin" or "Paris is the capital of Germany" by modulating their thoughts and altering the blood-flow pattern. The answers relayed through the system were consistent about 70 percent of the time, substantially better than chance.
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Reached Via a Mind-Reading Device, Deeply Paralyzed Patients Say They Want to Live More

Reached Via a Mind-Reading Device, Deeply Paralyzed Patients Say They Want to Live

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  • Harsh (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @03:23PM (#53783191)

    Doctor: Paris is the capital of Germany
    American patient: Yes
    Doctor: Okay, this one can die

    • I don't want to die. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @06:55PM (#53784799)

      This bullshit about how we all have to grow old and die has got to fucking stop. Humanity need to quit dragging its feet and fucking cure aging. Our species has waited long enough. It is time for the dying to stop.

      For god's sake, get on it!

  • Seventy Percent (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @03:24PM (#53783199)

    Sorry to be the skeptic, but 70% of the time isn't really that high. it means that the machine can read your thought 40% of the time and then the remaining 60% is a coin flip.

    And this assumes no biases introduced into the process. We've seen in the past that ways of reading a paralyzed persons thought have turned out to either be scams, or well-intentioned people unconsciously affecting the results of the readings.

    Now, I really hope we find ways to accomplish what this researchers are claiming, but I am skeptical.

    • True, but even 40% is better than nothing. If all of this is true of course.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
        40% would be worse than guessing, with a yes/no possibility.

        • No because the 40% was already eliminating the guessing and was reducing the actual result of 70% (the whole 40% thing was confusing and unnecessary).

          The real % of the time it's right is 70%, which is significantly better than random chance (which would be 50%).

          • You can only claim better than Random in a situation like this if the questions and responses aren't conditioned or influenced by the questioner. Count me a skeptic. Time will tell if the methodologies are sound, without consensus and duplication the individual results should be interesting but not confirmed.

            • Indeed. This should be subjected to the same rigorous testing that any other claim of mind reading gets in a scientific setting. Ditch the subjective statement and "consistency" measures - that's just a playground for wishful thinking.

              Go through a deck of black and white flashcards, "For each card, tell me if it's black". Or warm and cold objects held against the skin. Ideally a whole range of different binary stimuli to make sure it's detecting thought and not just the recognition of a particular stimul

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rtb61 ( 674572 )

            Sorry but to claim that you must use massive data sets. So for example toss a coin three times and get three heads in a row, still highly probable just less than a fifty percent chance. To validate, you must toss that coin at least 10 times and preferably 100 to actually get anywhere near fifty percent heads and fifty percent tales, the fewer the tosses the far more likely 80% heads and twenty percent tales etc. is quite readily possible. So the test seems to be more about making people more comfortable wit

      • True, but even 40% is better than nothing.

        The 40% is likely not random. The response may be stronger when it is something the patient cares deeply about. So the response to "Is your shoe size nine?" may be weaker than "Do you want us to kill you?".

        Also, like many bio-feedback systems, the accuracy could be improved with training. If the patient practices, they may get much better at giving the intended response. It is not like they have something better to do with their time.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          The response may be stronger when it is something the patient cares deeply about. So the response to "Is your shoe size nine?" may be weaker than "Do you want us to kill you?".

          Then again, certain answers may be more nuanced than a simple yes or no. I imagine that my answer to the "Do you want us to kill you?" question would be along the lines of "Do whatever is best for my immediate family." Maybe my wife and daughter would like having me around even if I was "locked in" or maybe I would just be a burden - both financial and otherwise.

          Not all questions have a yes or no answer.

        • Exactly... Both the tech itself can be improved in accuracy, and normal bio-feedback training be used to increase the accuracy once baseline communication is established. The thing is, and this is also applicable to "questions that aren't just Yes/No", is that multiple questions can be used to follow up: "Is Paris the capital of Germany?" "OK, is that right, you just told me "NO"?" ...etc. This also addresses cases where certain topics may be less reliable or complicated.

    • OK Mr. Jurgenmeyer, I am going to ask you a question. Are you OK with me sleeping with your wife? Lay very still and don't say anything if you approve of me doing this. Jump up and down and pat your belly if you'd rather I not sleep with your wife whilst you're in a coma.

    • Re:Seventy Percent (Score:5, Insightful)

      by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @03:36PM (#53783313) Homepage

      it means that the machine can read your thought 40% of the time and then the remaining 60% is a coin flip.

      That's not how probabilities work. It's true that it's better by 20% than a coin flip, but the rest of your conclusions are completely wrong.

      • That's not how probabilities work

        Exactly. It COULD be that this is what's happening (i.e., 40% of time reading accurately, the rest of the time just chance). But it could also be all sorts of other more complex relationships with data.

        That division depends on a strict delineation between results which are KNOWN to be accurate vs. those subject to chance. But it could also be that measurements of brain activity only his a certain threshold in a subset of measurements.

        For example, think of rolling a 10-sided die, and if you get 1 thro

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by AvitarX ( 172628 )

      Can non locked in people use the device?

      What percentage?

      Also, 70% should allow sentences to be written (frequency order the letter using a language library for next (similar to Dash), slowly show them, have the patient think YES fromnwhrb they see the one they want until "yes" is registered, and then start with the next letter.

      At 70% one should be able to get close enough to desirable the results.

      • Re:Seventy Percent (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Immerman ( 2627577 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @09:42PM (#53785653)

        True, but frequency ordering would get horribly tedious fast. Something more like a binary tree would be much more efficient - you can identify any letter in the alphabet with only 5 yes/no questions: Does the next letter come before N? - yes. Before H? -no Before K? -yes Before I?-yes Your letter is H. Next letter...

        Of course with a binary search you *always* need to answer log2(N) questions (or one less, if you for a non-power-of-two number of options), and we could do much better using an unbalanced tree where the most frequently used letters required answering fewer questions.

        Probably you'd want to navigate something like a static Huffman coding tree. As I recall (can anyone confirm?) an optimal coding of US English averages around 2.5 bits per letter, so on average you'd only need about 15 answers per six-letter word. For added convenience you could also add one or more "escape characters" to allow fast access to a palette of common phrases.

        It never ceases to amaze me how crude many such communication devices are. I could understand doctors ignoring decades of information theory as outside their field of expertise, but the programmers who actually write the software have no excuse. I mean yes, there's going to be a learning curve as you learn your way around your Huffman tree, but if you're stuck communicating through a computer for the rest of your life, I'd think it would be worth the effort. Though I could understand picking something a little suboptimal just to avoid running into those 13+bit letters in the middle of a sentence.

        And of course, if your equipment can distinguish between more than just two states, most such encoding trees can be trivially extended to 3- or more-way trees to drastically reduce the average number of nodes you need to traverse

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by AvitarX ( 172628 )

          I was working on the assumption there were three states though "no answer, yes, no" and that no answer would have a much higher success rate.

          I would suspect that with frequency (based on history, not entire language) you could get pretty close, for example after prett "y" would be next, after "gue" first S then R (I just typed gue into google, I don't know the reality).

          If you are working by elimination, I feel the failure mode will become very difficult to decipher, but if you can say OK, it was this letter

          • True - assuming it could actually also detect a third "null" state would improve things dramatically. A linear scanning system though would basically be ignoring the "no" state, so you'd be wasting around 1/3rd of your agonizingly narrow input channel.

            Consider too, if you're averaging substantially less than three nodes per letter then you can scan MUCH slower than you would linearly, which would presumably increase signaling accuracy and decrease user stress, while still increasing speed. Instead of "they

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ( 4621901 )

      70% of the time means if you ask the patient 100 times if they like green eggs with ham, the machine should give you either 70 no's with 30 yes's or 70 yes's with 30 no's.

      Also

      the machine can read your thought 40% of the time and then the remaining 60% is a coin flip

      is not a great way to look at probability. We could say the same thing like this,
      the machine can read your thought 70% of the time and then the remaining 30% will surely fail. Or
      the machine can read your thought 0% of the time and the remaining 100% is a chance of 7 out of 10 die roll.

      In the end, you've just confused yourself.

      The easi

    • Re:Seventy Percent (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Thursday February 02, 2017 @04:29AM (#53786767)

      Sorry to be the skeptic, but 70% of the time isn't really that high

      That would be a pathetic result in machine learning.

      I wonder if it was double-blind.

      I wonder if 50% of the test questions were 'yes' and 50% 'no'.

      I wonder whether the test questions were presented in random order.

      I wonder if it requires a human interpretor.

      I wonder if other researchers can duplicate the results.

      Sounds like someone is trying to apply a lie detector to unconscious people.

    • "Success percentage" means nothing, as everyone who has studied a little bit of statistics knows well. There are well-established methods to tell if a result is meaningful or not. In other words: P-values or GTFO.

  • Interesting, but I'm not sure I trust it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by scubamage ( 727538 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @03:26PM (#53783211)
    This is neat research, but I want it much more strongly vetted. It reminds way too much of the facilitated communication [wikipedia.org] mess we encountered several years ago.

    • Of course if you don't have masses of insurance that will keep you alive even though you are not brain dead most healthcare systems will kill you anyway. So fuck this news because it has fuck all to do with how you will die.

    • This is neat research, but I want it much more strongly vetted.

      Nope. We have reached the top of the mountain. There is no further we can go. All research into this will halt now.

      Sorry, this is as good as it gets.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Please don't use the phrase "strongly vetted". You-know-who ruined it, now meaning, "Reject 'em if they give me heebie-jeebies".

  • Success rate (Score:5, Interesting)

    by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @03:27PM (#53783229) Homepage Journal

    70% doesn't seem high enough to make any decisions.

    And how was this controlled for confirmation bias, like has been discredited for other techniques where the person that reads the results also knows the answers, like e.g. dog training and lie detectors?

    Without doing double blinds, 70% seems like a horribly bad result, and no more than what would be expected from confirmation bias.

    • And how was this controlled for confirmation bias, like has been discredited for other techniques where the person that reads the results also knows the answers

      The computer could be double-blinding it to an extent. It depends on if they're looking at the signal and making a human determination or if the computer is doing statistical analysis on the input and making the 'yes/no' answer for the researcher.

      • Needs to be replicated a few more times, especially after the various neuroscience debacles we've had recently [pnas.org].

      • It's possible, even with yes/no questions, to manipulate the question, the phrasing and the body language to indicate a desired result when the person is actually capable of physically responding, I can't even begin to imagine the confirmation bias that could be imparted when the questionee isn't capable of responding in a recognized way.

        Wait to see if the study can be confirmed by someone else without the same motives of this researcher. This result of "I want to live" reeks of someone that's trying to pre

        • This result of "I want to live" reeks of someone that's trying to prevent euthanasia

          I wasn't sure if it was that or something with a high likelihood of a strong emotional response. Though I don't think the test method depends on the emotional response, but something more deliberate.

    • It is probably good enough if you have three responses instead of two.

      Instead of two responses: Yes and No

      have three responses: Down Arrow, Right Arrow, and ENTER

      Now I bet the reliability of your Yes / No responses is much higher.

    • Re:Success rate (Score:4, Insightful)

      by AthanasiusKircher ( 1333179 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @05:26PM (#53784261)

      70% doesn't seem high enough to make any decisions.

      To make legal decisions on care or something? Probably not. But it MIGHT be evidence that we're on the right track to communication.

      And how was this controlled for confirmation bias, like has been discredited for other techniques where the person that reads the results also knows the answers, like e.g. dog training and lie detectors?

      This is a valid question. I skimmed the actual study, but I don't have time right now to dig through the jargon and see how much these results are likely to be due to confirmation bias.

      Here's the actual study. [plos.org] Does someone who knows more about these sorts of measurements want to sort out whether or not there were adequate procedural constraints to prevent confirmation bias?

      Without doing double blinds, 70% seems like a horribly bad result, and no more than what would be expected from confirmation bias.

      That's just nonsense. You can't tell whether confirmation bias is present by the level of success! That's not how stats work. In some cases, confirmation bias could easily produce a 95% or even 100% success rate. In other cases, it would be barely better than chance. You can only tell confirmation bias by looking at procedure and data analysis techniques.

      And in any case, I'm surprised at the statistical ignorance shown by many posts in this thread. 70% success where 50% is chance may or may not be a significant finding -- if you do it with 10 questions (or coin flips or whatever), it's probably not significant. But if you ask a million questions or flip a coin a MILLION times and see 70% heads or whatever, it's pretty strong evidence of a pattern. (Would you place a 1:1 wager and gamble against heads on a coin after a million flips like that?)

      But again, whether the result shows strong statistical significance from data analysis is a different question from whether confirmation bias could be present in the procedure.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by arth1 ( 260657 )

        That's just nonsense. You can't tell whether confirmation bias is present by the level of success!

        I wasn't attempting to. I attempted to say that a 70% success is well within what's often seen with confirmation bias affecting the results for other types of tests.

        Unless the person interpreting the resulting answer never heard the question, nor could deduce it from others present, I question the validity. Even as a preliminary. We should not get our hopes up. This could turn into the next lie detector hoax, and be abused the same way.
        In which case it would be worse than nothing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gonz ( 13914 )

        This is a valid question. I skimmed the actual study, but I don't have time right now to dig through the jargon and see how much these results are likely to be due to confirmation bias.

        How would that happen exactly? The results are calculated using an SVM classifier algorithm, not a human "interpreting" the results. Basically they train the classifier on 50 sessions, and then test in on maybe 7 sessions. Each session involves asking the person 20 questions.

        Here's the actual study. Does someone who knows more about these sorts of measurements want to sort out whether or not there were adequate procedural constraints to prevent confirmation bias?

        The most likely bias in this scenario would be sampling bias, not conformation bias. It would include mistakes like this: - Testing a bunch of different subjects, but only counting the favorable ones as your sample set (i.e. "he di

  • Bad Questions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Spy Handler ( 822350 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @03:35PM (#53783297) Homepage Journal

    "Paris is the capital of Germany" -- some people will legitly not know the answer. And besides France and Germany are both white-man countries in Western Europe that are very close to each other; someone not fully alert could easily confuse the two.

    "You were born in Berlin" -- people with varying degrees of amnesia or repression forget their personal details, but still retain general knowledge of the world. For instance, "Do Birds Fly?" or "Is ice hotter than the Sun?" are questions that even full-on amnesiacs can answer correctly.

    Also, 70% seems like a pretty horrible accuracy rate. For yes/no answers to such super-simple questions, the success rate should be 100% or close to it.

    • For instance, "Do Birds Fly?" or "Is ice hotter than the Sun?" are questions that even full-on amnesiacs can answer correctly.

      Also, 70% seems like a pretty horrible accuracy rate. For yes/no answers to such super-simple questions, the success rate should be 100% or close to it.

      Yes, but if you ask someone if birds fly- they might think about penguins or emu, or ostrich, or dodo, or one of the other flightless birds.

      • Yes, but if you ask someone if birds fly- they might think about penguins or emu, or ostrich, or dodo, or one of the other flightless birds.

        So keep it simple and don't rely on their knowledge or the amount of amnesia or brain damage. What's wrong with questions like "Is 3+3=7" and "Does the word Frog start with a G?" If all you're trying to do is detect Yes and No then there are plenty of black and white questions that are much easier to answer.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )

      You cant count americans in that. The american education is so bad that a large swath think that europe is a country.

      • Are you saying it is not?

      • I've had Americans tell me that my English is amazing, I sound almost fluent. (I'm English). I've also had an American say "I love your accent, are you from Korea" (I'm not asian).

      • Yes, because Paris doesn't exist in Texas [wikipedia.org]. Moscow doesn't exist in Idaho [wikipedia.org]. London doesn't exist in Kentucky. [wikipedia.org]

        I used to think the same as you do i.e. American education is dumb because Americans don't know where Paris is! Until I realized that major city names are common across the US. When you say "I am from Paris" and the response being "Where is that".. It doesn't mean they don't know about Paris France but are wondering what local city in the state or neighboring state you are talking about.

      • Just curious, do you think the United States is a country?
        Decide and we'll get back to that in a moment.

        > The american education is so bad that a large swath think that europe is a country.

        Ignoring for the moment that your education apparently didn't teach you what proper nouns are, I've noticed that a lot of Europeans seem to think Europe is a country these days. Ask them where they are from and they say "Europe." They aren't completely wrong, Europe (EU) has a parliament that makes law and a high

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          One key difference as far as I'm aware is that the several states of the United States ceded their power to make treaties with other countries or to lay punitive import duties. (U.S. Const., article I, section 10) I was under the impression that the countries in the European Union retained this power.

          • That's interesting. The EU seems to be under impression that they've negotiated many trade treaties limiting tariffs, so member states no longer have the freedom to set their own:

            http://ec.europa.eu/trade/poli... [europa.eu]

            And of course there are about a hundred EU rules about what kind of tariffs states may and may not have.

            Not that there are NO differences between the EU and the US, of course, but at their core they are essentially the same type of thing - the US federal government has just been around longer, so i

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tepples ( 727027 )

              Then why does each EU member have a separate seat at the UN, while the USA doesn't? Is it only that the USA predates the UN and the EU doesn't? Perhaps they're waiting for Brexit so that the veto power vested in France's permanent seat on the Security Council can be passed to the EU.

              • That's an interesting point. If the EU continues to act more and more like a single country, it will be fair to ask why they have so many seats. The US doesn't have one for each state.

        • >>Just curious, do you think the United States is a country?

          Yes, and "America" is one of three continents.
          To describe someone as an "American" is kind of like calling someone from Libya an "African." BTW, if the USA isn't an country, then I'm a Californian.

          • > America" is one of three continents. ...
            > I'm a Californian.

            Indeed. California public schools, it seems.

            • Would you care to explain your criticism?

              • Reading my post again, I'm a bit ashamed because that was rude. Of course people are rude on forums all the time, but that doesn't mean I should be. I apologize.

                To my understanding, Central America is not a continent. Geographers recognize five to seven continents (Eurasia and the Americas are sometimes considered one continent each). The first two sentences from the Wikipedia entry "Continent" are well written, so I'll quote them:

                A continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. Genera

                • Thank you for the apology. My mis-worded response didn't warrant it, but my point still stands. "American" is a misnomer commonly used to describe us folks who live in the USA. I travel a lot, and on a particular trip an Egyptian I had met to work will called me "an American". I politely explained I'm from the USA, and no more "American" than he is "African". We've been close friends ever since that trip.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cederic ( 9623 )

          I've noticed that a lot of Europeans seem to think Europe is a country these days. Ask them where they are from and they say "Europe."

          That's a non-sequitur. I am from Europe, but Europe is not a country. I am not from the UK but the UK is a country. I am not from Scotland but Scotland is a country.

          I am British and I am European.

          This causes me no confusion at all, or those around me.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by slew ( 2918 )

        You cant count americans in that. The american education is so bad that a large swath think that europe is a country.

        Of course the USA wanted Europe to become a country like the US after WWII and embraced this age old idea of "The United States of Europe" [wikipedia.org]. After all us Americans expect the whole world to copy us eventually ;^)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The subjects are in Europe, in Geneva. I seriously doubt if you could find anyone over the age of 10 in Geneva who doesn't know the answer to those questions.

  • Slashdot didn't use the Captain Pike keyword under the story. Dammit, I'm gonna revoke their Geek Card!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slew ( 2918 )

      Slashdot didn't use the Captain Pike keyword under the story. Dammit, I'm gonna revoke their Geek Card!

      Didn't happen in the new Kelvin Timeline, he was killed by Khan. Keep up with your temporal mechanics or I'll have to revoke *your* Geek Card ;^)

  • I just want to make clear here and now that I do not want to live in case I should ever by completely paralyzed.

    On a side note, if you share my sentiment you should check out your local lawmakers' provisions for such cases. Since my parents live in Germany, I know that at least in Germany you can make what's called a Patientenverfuegung at a notary. Emergency services and doctors will respect this document if you have it in your pocket and will switch off the machines. You can also determine a next of kin

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      I just want to make clear here and now that I do not want to live in case I should ever by completely paralyzed.

      But there's always the possibility remote sensing will soon allow you to cruise around in a robot body, visit trade shows, and grab p.... uh, packet analyzers.

      Experimental direct-brain hookups already look promising.

      Being paralyzed itself is not what scares me; it's being bored if I cannot interact with anyone or read books or rant about stupid web GUI (non) standards on slashdot, etc. The interac

      • On the plus side, if you're completely paralyzed bad web GUI on Slashdot won't bother you.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          Paralyzed people use Lynx? You surveyed them already? (I wasn't referring to Slashdot's own UI, by the way, although now that you bring that up...

      • Being bored isn't so bad. I find I can occupy my brain with day dreaming or full dreaming.

    • If you are completely paralyzed, you might change your mind. It happens. In that case, it would be good to be able to confirm that's what you want before pulling the plug. In the meantime, see what you need as an advance healthcare directive or living will or whatever.

  • Am I the only one wondering? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by negrace ( 984807 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @03:46PM (#53783439)
    Why use disabled people for testing? Use healthy ones, this is how you will know if it is working right or not.

    • They probably did. But since ALS damages brain cells, you likely have to re-calibrate. Looks like they were doing this in 2010 [nejm.org] with less severely disabled people. I'm too lazy to look further back.

    • Re:Am I the only one wondering? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Wednesday February 01, 2017 @04:31PM (#53783875)
      The device probably works better with certain people, not so well with others. So the average success rate in controlled studies may not be relevant to a specific individual.

      Still, it seems like it'd be trivial for family members to come up with questions that only the patient would know the answer to. Write them on a note, doctor takes it into the room and asks the questions, writes down what the machine says are the answers, and brings it back out to the family for review. (Can't have the family in the room when the calibration questions are asked, lest the doctor takes queues from the family and guesses the answer.)
  • I'm not paralyzed, and I don't want to live. Maybe I'll run into a tree on my way home from work and see if I can get paralyzed. At least I won't have to come to work tomorrow, and that makes it all worth it.

  • If this new mind-reading device can deduce between two (three?) specific states of the brain, this opens the door to much more once the efficiency improves.
    You could communicate in Morse code, since you can now have signals that can be interpreted as "dots" or "dashes".

  • Q. "Do you want to live?"
    1st paralyzed man: "Yes."
    2nd paralyzed man: "Yes"
    3rd paralyzed man: "Yes"
    4th man: F*** yeah! What the f*** kind of question is that!

    Doctor: "I'll put that down as an affirmative"

  • Doctor: Do you want to live?

    Patient: No, kill me
    Machine: (NO KILL ME)

    Doctor: This one wants to live!

  • Nope (Score:2)

    by kuzb ( 724081 )
    If you're asking me a very final question like "do you want to live?" the machine better be right 100% of the time.

    70% is not good enough.

    • 70% is not good enough.

      Probably good enough to serve for snake oil for grieving relatives.

      (Which is presumably what it was designed for.)

  • "Doctor I have a reading"
    "What does it say?"
    "He distinctly said 'To Blave'."

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