m
 mm

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 Thought Translation Device

Introduction
O Some neurological
conditions, such as
amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
(ALS),epilepsy can lead to
severe motor disability.
O Such patients are referred to
as Dzlocked-indz.

OMany patients cannot use conventional devices made for

patients with severe motor disability, because these
require consistent control over at least one muscle group.

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 Thought Translation Device

O §ecent studies indicate that humans can learn to

control certain components of their EEG and can
use them as a new communication channel.
O EEG-based communication methods requires no
neuromuscular control.
O In order to enable such patients to
communicate, a technique was developed
where subjects learn to control their slow
cortical potential producing signal according to
the task requirement.

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 Thought Translation Device

G
t is SCP?
O SCP(slow cortical potential)Ȅone of the EEG signal
O Compared with other EEG signals, SCPs have two important
advantages:
First, they are present
in the brain activity of
every person.
Second, the the control
of SCP was found to be
highly specific.

Therefore, a SCP self regulatory method has been developed for

communication purposes.
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 Thought Translation Device

0 Requirements 4 Communic
tion
O First, the learning ability of completely
paralyzed patients must be proven.
O Second, the EEG must be analyzed on-line for
immediate reinforcement.
O The on-line analysis must include all the
transformations necessary to extract the to-be-
controlled signal.
O Third, the software has to be flexible in order to
adjust it to the individual d
 procedure.

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 Thought Translation Device

mec nology used in mm

O In its present form, the core of the
TTD consists of a single computer
program that runs under all MS-
Windows versions.
O This software contains the
functions of
electroencephalogram (EEG)-
acquisition storage , signal
processing, classification ,and
various applications for brain-
computer - communication such as
spelling.
O It was written in C++ for windows
and uses the BCI-2000 common
standard .

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 Thought Translation Device
[lock i
gr
m

·The EEG is recorded from Cz, C3, and C4 of the 10-20 leads. SCP shifts
from Cz (vertex) serve as the primary signal, which has to be controlled and
used for operating the thought-translation device (TTD).
·The signals are amplified with an EEG amplifier set to a low-pass filter of
30 Hz and a time constant of 8 s and then digitized with a sampling rate of
100 Hz.
·EEG amplifier with a long time constant is essential.
·Thus we get many kind of signals i.e. signals for all the component s of
EEG including background noise.
·We use filters to remove the background noise and again perform signal
transformation to get the required signal and to perform cursor movement
on the computer screen.
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 Thought Translation Device

Procedure

O Patients sit in wheelchairs or beds and viewed a

color PC screen .
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 Thought Translation Device

O two rectangles (goals) and a small moving

object (ball) are displayed.
O viewing distance is about 140 cm.
O If the second (C3ȂC4) channel used, two more
goals (on the right and the left frame of the
screen) are displayed.
O Two alternating tones of different pitch, which
followed each other in an interval of 2 s, held
the patient to the rhythm of the program.
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 Thought Translation Device

O The ball move during the low-pitch tone and the

high-pitch tone (active phase) and remained in
the center of the screen between the high-pitch
tone and the low-pitch tone (baseline phase).
O The patientǯs task is to move the ball in a
specified direction toward one of the goals
during the active phase.
O The minimum SCP amplitude difference
between baseline and active phase necessary to
move the ball from the center of the screen into
a goal.

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 Thought Translation Device

O If a negative potential has to be produced in the

active phase, compared with the baseline interval,
the ball moves upwards, and vice-versa
(Dzpositivitydz), is true when the ball moves
downwards.
O If there was no difference between the baseline
interval and the SCP amplitude in the active phase,
the ball remained in the center of the screen.
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Production of L
ngu
ge




M
O Goals used presented a word or letter sequence (the
lower goal) and a space for the patientǯs own text (the
upper goal).
O In the case depicted, the patient has to select the letter
DzMdz. In order to do this, the patient has to move the ball
into the bottom goal. If the characters shown should
not be selected (if it doesnǯt contain the required letter),
the patientǯs task would be to keep the ball away from
this goal.
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 Thought Translation Device

 

   

      

O When EEG responses reach an accuracy of 80Ȃ85%, the

method of choice is a dichotomic LSP structure.
O At the first level, the alphabet is divided in two parts, at
the second level each half is divided into two quartiles,
etc., up to the last level containing only one letter.
O In training condition, learning to use LSP proceeds from
easy to more difficult task. It starts with two-level
dichotomic structure to three, four and so on.
O Any of the above two methods can be used for selecting
text.
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Ôerits
O TTD can achieve an
accuracy level of 65Ȃ85%.
O The present software
can easily be used for
control of patientǯs
environment (e.g., call attendant, switch a light on
or off, etc.) by means of short task sequences being
linked with corresponding technical devices.
O Studies shows a reduction of epileptic seizures by
teaching patients to voluntarily produce positive
SCP shifts.
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 Thought Translation Device

emerits
O SCP is the necessity of a low time constant and,
hence, contamination by Electrooculogram
(EOG) artifacts.
O It requires more time for communication.
O It is costly.

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 Thought Translation Device

Improvements
O §eliable techniques for on-line EOG artifact
control during self regulation have developed.
O To achieve higher speed :-
1. Error rate should be reduced.
2. We should reduce the time necessary for each
single response.
3. Complexity of the alphabet and language
structure of LSP should be reduced.

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 Thought Translation Device

Reference
O en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron
O ieeexplore.ieee.org
O www.springerlink.com

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