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Diving bell & the butterfly (Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:53:45 +0000)

A new movie, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” has recently been released detailing the life of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of Elle magazine, who suffered from locked-in syndrome. Using his only remaining movement, blinking his eye, he wrote the book of the same name over a period of months, letter by letter. This story is often cited as one of the inspirations for brain-computer interface research, and our BCI program is working on developing new communications systems, such as integrating Dasher and BCI2000. The video link shows an example of how a BCI could be used by a person with locked-in syndrome for writing.

Dasher Video

Media: video/mpeg (17423028 bytes)

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Research Projects and Groups

in vivo Device Development

The goal of this project to develop and characterize implanted chronic neural recording devices. These electrodes with incorporated drug delivery should be capable of recording consistent neural activity for years with minimal risk of complications.

People: Jiwan Kim, Joe Hippensteel, Paul Victorey, Adam Wilson


in vitro Device Development

The goal of this project is to develop "Lab-on-a-chip" microfluidic systems that allow the micro-environment of a cell culture or brain slice to be finely regulated. Unlike the standard macro-scale systems used for decades, microfluidics allows the researcher to expose multiple regions of a slice or culture to multiple environments simultaneously, allowing for control several orders of magnitude better than had previously been possible.

People: Alex Blake, Yu Huang, Steve Skroch, Paul Victorey


Clinical Applications

The goal of this project group is to translate devices and techniques devloped in our other research areas into clinical applications. This includes research with EEG-based Brain-Computer Interfaces and ECoG-based Brain-Computer Interfaces.

Click here for information on participating in this research as a subject!

People: Adam Wilson, Elizabeth Felton