STAR Point Transcript - Brain Actuated Technologies
Guests: Dr. Andrew Junker and Charlie Peters
Host: Earle Harrison
Intro music and ID:
From the depths of ingenuity to the heart and soul of assistive technology for people with disabilities, STAR is a System of Technology to Achieve Results!
STAR Point does not endorse or recommend any product, individual or agency. The information expressed on STAR Point is informational in nature and does not imply endorsement by STAR's funders: The National Institute of Disability Rehabilitation Research or the State of Minnesota.
Transcript begins here:
EH: Welcome, and thank you for tuning in to STAR Point, a project of the Minnesota STAR Program. STAR stands for a System of Technology to Achieve Results. I've got two guests in the studio today, Dr. Andrew Junker, President of Brain Actuated Technologies, and his colleague, Charlie Peters. Here I am sitting at the control room desk with my forehead perfectly still, because as soon as Andrew and Charlie came into the room they donned a pretty snazzy headband on me. And, actually, what is this thing I'm wearing?
AJ: The headband you're wearing has three sensors over the forehead, and those measure voltage, any muscle contraction, brain waves and lateral eye movement.
EH: Okay.
AJ: The name of the product is the Cyberlink.
EH: And what exactly is a Cyberlink?
AJ: Cyberlink is a device that gives people access to a computer. There are various ways it can be used depending on a person's ability. You can use a mouse and click, do everything you can with a mouse. It's -- you have that capability. You can also do click, zip to click. Then you couple that with communication software and you can surf the Net. You can do anything you can do with a mouse and a keyboard.
EH: Just who benefits from this type of technology?
AJ: Anybody wanting to control a computer that can't use their hands.
EH: Okay. And I would imagine that it goes beyond simply not being able to use their hands, is that correct?
AJ: Some of our clients are people with ALS, muscular dystrophy --
EH: Uh-huh.
AJ: -- people who have had traumatic brain injuries. We've had some people that have been diagnosed in a coma, and when they started working with the Cyberlink, they exhibited connection and control, and so the diagnosis was changed.
EH: Really?
AJ: Uh-huh.
EH: So they were considered to be in a persistent vegetative state?
AJ: Correct.
EH: And did this mean there was very minimal brain activity?
AJ: What it meant at the time was, they had no way to determine if the person was -- there was no way for the person to reach out symbolically or to communicate, to indicate they were conscious and aware. So when they put on the Cyberlink, because it can respond to such small signals at the forehead, things that we can't perceive existing, the Cyberlink can respond to. And then because of the intimate connection to the person with the computer, the way I kind of say it, it seems as if the person's brain recognizes that it now has control and says, "Hey, there's a reason to reach out and respond."
EH: Okay. So these folks thought to be in persistent vegetative state, are there any situations where these folks have ever gotten -- got better and --
AJ: Yes. Well, an example would be a woman in California. When I started working with her, she had a diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. I started working with her. At one point she reached out and turned on a tape recorder. And a year later they -- the people at the school said they took her to a mall to -- first time since her automobile accident, you know, took her out of the hospital setting to buy her clothes.
EH: Sure.
AJ: And another instance a woman -- a young woman up in Saginaw, Michigan, when she had, again, an automobile accident, so a traumatic brain injury. When they started working with her, they were just doing what is called custodial work where they would -- where she was mainstreamed into the school. They would just put her from one chair to another. When I started working with her, she exhibited low brain wave activity, no beta activity and certainly no muscle control. And over the time they worked with her, the beta brain resonances, or brain waves, became stronger, and she started using those as control so she could play video games and things like that.
EH: Uh-huh.
AJ: So, yes, it seems under the right conditions that, you know, with feedback, the system can change.
EH: I would imagine that people with quadriplegia could benefit from this as well. Do you have a pretty wide customer base in that respect?
AJ: Yes. Usually it's people with a very high cervical --
EH: Uh-huh.
AJ: -- kind of --
CP: Spine area.
AJ: Yeah, like C-5, C-4.
CP: C-1.
AJ: Very high, where there's less use of the neck muscles. I mean, because there are other controllers that can be utilized if the head can be moved.
CP: Yes.
AJ: If an individual can't move his head, then we rely on the facial muscles for -- for controlling.
EH: Okay.
AJ: The beauty of the Cyberlink is, to control things, it doesn't matter where your head is relative to the computer screen.
EH: Uh-huh.
AJ: So -- and you don't have to hold your head in a certain position. As an example, in California one -- a young girl -- I think she was only -- it's the youngest one I know -- client that I know. I think she was 22 months old, and they had to aspirate her every five minutes. So they -- she would lay on the floor, and they turned the computer on and saw it. So she could see it, and she exhibited control. Another man, before he passed away, that had ALS, he would sit in a big easy chair, and he had a big 60-inch monitor, and he would surf the Net all day.
EH: Okay. So I've got my eyes closed, and I've been trying to really fight the urge to open them, because we've got the Cyberlink turned on, and as I open my eyes, actually, (sound) you can hear the tone in the background there. Sorry I don't have a microphone on here, but you can hear it in the background. And what exactly am I doing here?
AJ: You're -- we're at the beginning games. We call it a Grow Game, and --
(Sound.)
EH: Sorry about that.
AJ: It's teaching -- you know, it's giving you feedback as to the strength of the signal at your forehead. So as you raise an eye -- you start raising your eyebrows or intensify that voltage there --
EH: Okay.
AJ: -- that sounds gets louder. And you're actually, if you could see it, you're making -- there are concentric circles that are appearing, something that's growing bigger and bigger. So it's a very simple cause-and-effect game which, when you're talking about -- if you're dealing -- sometimes we've worked with people that we didn't even know if they could hear us. So you want to start with a game that's so simple that if they do anything, you'll see a change. And there's an art to finding what we call a window of opportunity so that the person in their brain can say, "Hey, wait a minute. I just made a change, and I saw something happen out there, both visually and auditorily."
EH: Uh-huh.
AJ: And then you start -- then you create that loop, that communication. Once you've got that communication, then you can go further.
CP: That signal can be used to click a mouse or to move the pointer on the mouse around the screen. So every time a listener would hear the sounds in the background, that's an opportunity to actually click the mouse with your eyebrows.
AJ: Yeah, and this game is to -- as Charlie said, it's to start to learn -- like if you just intensified the energy at your forehead a little bit, there would just be a little bit of sound there. Let's kind of put this to work here (sound). And if you soften, it goes down, so -- but if you make -- and now I'll intensify a whole lot to really -- (sound), and it gets louder and then just keeps going up and down. I now let it to go down (sound), so that would be like making your cursor go up and down. Now let's try with the experience of clicking, with the feedback from that.
EH: Okay. So I have to be able to recognize this window of opportunity?
CP: Or feel it.
EH: Okay. So now we've actually switched over to another mode, is that correct?
AJ: That's correct. There's another training game. This is called Click Practice.
EH: Okay.
AJ: The idea here is, if you can make a signal go above a threshold, called a click line, it would be the energy or the activity needed to do the same thing as pressing left or right mouse button or any key on the keyboard. So go ahead and raise an eyebrow quickly.
(Sound.)
AJ: When you hear that sound --
EH: Uh-huh.
AJ: -- you've created a voltage which goes above the click line, and you get an auditory feedback, and you would have a visual feedback as well. Now, do two of those, Earle.
(Sound.)
AJ: Well, you did three, but --
EH: I felt two.
AJ: And so it takes -- it's -- the thing -- Cyber -- this is a good point to stop and say, the Cyberlink, to learn to use it, it's learning new motor skills. So it takes some practice, and it depends on -- you know, some people can master it in a few hours, other people take longer. It depends on the -- their ability and, you know, their comfort with using computers and things.
EH: Okay. So the ding was me actually clicking, and the crescendo sound was -- that was dragging something or --
AJ: Well, if you -- if you -- if you raise an eyebrow once (sound), that's a single click. Now do it twice (sound). Now do it three times (sound). Three would be a drag, you know, a click and drag.
EH: Okay.
AJ: So it gives you the option when you're on the desktop to move a mouse around, but then you connect with a single click, double click, click and drag, and then if you kept going, you could do right click. There are other gestures that can be recognized.
EH: Okay.
AJ: It's sensitive enough to respond to alpha waves, beta waves --
EH: Really?
AJ: -- as well as muscle activity.
EH: Because I was wondering -- so it's a combination of both. I was wondering if it was muscle activity or brain waves that were at work.
AJ: We're measuring voltage at the forehead. Certainly when -- right now the primary control, if you were going to use it in this way, would be using the muscle for clicking, things like this.
EH: Uh-huh.
AJ: You can also -- it takes more practice learning brain wave control, but you could generate alpha waves, beta waves. What we're finding is some of the value of the alpha wave control, especially for kids with cerebral palsy, for example, we're kind of getting some suggestions that if they can achieve this alpha -- what I call an alpha state, then it -- it helps them relax, basically, which is a -- something that they want to understand how to do, but if you watch kids that have cerebral palsy control things, especially like the Cyberlink, they love doing it, but their whole body gets involved, and it's tiring. It's exhausting. So --
EH: Sort of like biofeedback.
AJ: Exactly.
EH: Okay.
AJ: Exactly.
EH: So you're actually using this as a biofeedback device?
AJ: Yeah, right. In fact, like, you know, we're here for this conference called Closing the Gap, and tomorrow, in fact, I'll be giving a paper in front of, well, anywhere from 10 to 50, a hundred people, and I'll be talking about the Cyberlink and controlling it at the same time. So as I'm talking about it and controlling it, it's giving me feedback as to how relaxed I am or how tense I am.
EH: Can we get a demonstration of that on you, since you're more familiar with how to use this thing and I'm just inadvertently kind of setting it off here (sound) --
(Laughing.)
EH: -- so it won't be visual.
AJ: Yeah, the feed back would be visual.
EH: Oh, okay.
AJ: Yeah. That's -- you know, people can go to our website. There's a lot of screen shots of -- of the computer software. They can actually see the screens like this Grow Box that we've just been making sounds to, and there's a thing called Click Practice. There's also success stories there about various people that -- that are using the Cyberlink with success.
EH: Okay.
CP: Give them the website.
AJ: Oh, right. Our website is called brainfingers.com.
EH: Brainfingers.com, B-R-A-I-N-F-I-N-G-E-R-S.com.
You're listening to STAR Point. This is a project of the Minnesota STAR Program, and our guests today in the studio are Dr. Andrew Junker and his colleague, Charlie Peters.
Musical Break.
EH: Welcome back to STAR Point. Our guests in the studio today are Andrew Junker, founder and president of Brain Actuated Technologies, and Charlie Peters. Charlie, what is your role in all of this?
CP: Well, I'm a friend of Andrew's, and we've come to Minneapolis today together to go to the Closing the Gap conference. I'm fascinated by the -- the Cyberlink technology that Andrew's developed and other similar technologies on display at Closing the Gap. So, you know, I've come to learn more about this field, and so far so good. We've really enjoyed Minneapolis.
EH: Some of our listeners may not realize that Closing the Gap is an international conference. Everybody who's anybody in the assistive technology industry are right here in lovely Minneapolis, Minnesota, where it is actually, by the way, snowing outside at this moment, on the 16th -- no, 16th of October? Yeah, 16th of October. And there's a lot of good technology to be seen at Closing the Gap, a lot of sessions here. You're actually presenting on a paper, you mentioned, Andrew?
AJ: Yeah, we're vendors, so we're actually -- we'll be --
EH: In the exhibit hall.
AJ: -- in the exhibit hall, and then as well I'm presenting a paper tomorrow on -- a title that's kind of long, but bottom line is, how to help people with neuromuscular problems but not just having an neuromuscular problem, but part of the issue is that it's a changing thing for people. The neuromuscular ability changes over time. One of the powers of the Cyberlink is its adjustability --
EH: Right.
AJ: -- to compensate.
EH: And Charlie sort of talked about that a little bit off the air. Why don't you good ahead and discuss that a little bit. There's modern ways to implement this.
CP: Sure. What fascinates me, first of all, it's a way to operate a computer without the use of hands, and really without movement of the head. An individual does not need to move their head to point, simply to move one's eyes or eyebrows to point and then click. As a matter of fact, I think there's -- depending on what muscles are available, what an individual has to use to operate the computer, Cyberlink can be adjusted. For instance, you can click with your eyebrows. And what else, Andrew, can you click with?
AJ: We've got some people where the forehead is totally paralyzed due to ALS, and they're using the jaw to click.
CP: Do they open their mouth or grit their teeth, or both, or either, or --
AJ: You know, I'm not sure.
CP: The jaw muscles make it work, though.
AJ: The jaw muscles, yeah. That's what's fascinating is that whatever muscles are available to an individual can be -- are utilized to direct a pointer and to click a mouse.
EH: And you can adjust the intensity, so if there is minimal muscular activity, then you can actually hone in on some of the brain wave activity.
CP: Sure, a brain wave or you can greatly amplify the muscle message. Likewise, if an individual has some background spasm in facial muscles due to their disorder or condition, that could -- Cyberlink can be adjusted so only the most -- the strongest contractions of those muscles will be picked up by Cyberlink, and you just mix out the noise, don't you, Andrew?
AJ: Uh-huh, that's right.
EH: Do you have folks who are using this technology in -- who may not have such -- oh, maybe they're not a quadriplegic or have ALS, it's just that muscle fatigue is a factor for them, folks with -- I think you mentioned muscular sclerosis or --
AJ: Well, muscular sclerosis --
CP: That's tricky.
AJ: -- that's another story. We'll talk about that in a minute.
CP: Muscular Dystrophy.
AJ: Muscular Dystrophy.
CP: Carpal tunnel syndrome.
AJ: Carpal tunnel. We have one woman who's a computer programmer. She actually uses what's called Naturally Speaking --
EH: Sure.
AJ: -- which is a voice for entering text, but she found that you start using that all -- talking for eight hours to a computer, your voice gets really burned out. So she couldn't program all day. So she now enters text with Naturally Speaking and she uses the Cyberlink for mousing around.
EH: Hmmm, okay.
AJ: And she loves -- one of her comments was, what she really liked was, when she was moving the mouse with the Cyberlink, it freed up those resources in her brain that had to do with thinking about the project, where when you're talking a mouse around the screen using Naturally Speaking, then that's what that part of your brain -- your brain's involved in that too. So it's --
EH: For our listeners we can talk a little bit about the physical characteristics of the Cyberlink. It's really just a box with a serial connection, I would say not much larger than, oh, an external modem.
AJ: Sure.
EH: Kind of an average-sized external modem, and it connects to the computer via the serial port, is that right?
AJ: That's correct.
EH: Okay. And --
AJ: Or USB, you know, serial to USB.
EH: Okay. Any plans of going wireless?
AJ: We're always planning to go wireless.
(Laughing.)
EH: So you've got this box, and there's a headband which is connected to the box with a length of -- what is that, ten feet?
AJ: No, it's actually six feet.
EH: Six feet, and this headband that goes around your head. What about other areas of -- could a person conceivably use a bicep to control --
AJ: Well, you can, actually. You can use any muscle that contracts. The power of -- I think one of the powers of the Cyberlink, by hooking at the forehead, it's the fusion of the brain and the body. So that even when you're controlling the mouse, for one thing, you're going to get more than just a single contraction. You get multiple axes and multiple clicks and gestures --
EH: Uh-huh.
AJ: -- that you get. There's more information there. And the other thing is, when a person's using it, a side benefit is, in addition to accessing, it's giving them feedback as to their state of relaxation, I guess.
EH: So how does a person type? Can a person actually generate documents using the Cyberlink?
AJ: What you would do then is the -- again, the Cyberlink is an access device, so it's replacing the mouse or a switch.
EH: Uh-huh.
AJ: So if you're -- you want to type, you would use what's called an on-screen keyboard. And the way the Cyberlink works, it can control -- it can work with all kinds of on-screen keyboards --
EH: Oh, great.
AJ: -- like WiVic, Easykeys, Clicker 4.
EH: I would imagine that some folks get pretty proficient using an on-screen keyboard, huh?
AJ: Yes. One of the powers of the Cyberlink is -- in fact, a study was done by the United States Air Force, and they found people could click -- these are able-bodied people -- could click 15 percent faster with a Cyberlink than they could using a mouse.
EH: Okay. How did you get involved with this type of technology?
AJ: Okay. My background -- I actually did research for the United States Air Force for 20 years. My background training is in electrical engineering, systems engineering. I used to teach and run a human factors engineering program. So it was taking all these skills, and then for my Ph.D. I minored in physiology a little bit, and so I had that as a foundation.
When we started developing this, my motivation originally when I created the Cyberlink was to create a window inside. I didn't really know anything about the disability community, and my motivation was, I had all this technology skills, I watched all this stuff going on, computers were getting more powerful, so I thought, okay, let's use all this to give people the ability to look back inside and empower themselves, you know, using all this stuff that we're creating.
In the process then, people with disabilities discovered us because of publicity we had gotten. I was on a show called Scientific American Frontiers where I sailed my sailboat with the Cyberlink. That's another story for another time. Along the way, the United States Air Force has helped us, because their interest is in controlling wearable computers, helmet-mounted displays, things like that.
Recently we've been awarded two National Institutes of Health grants, again, to see ways to improve the usefulness of the Cyberlink for people with disabilities. We think we have a way to separate muscle activity from brain wave activity. This is something that we feel will be very useful or valuable for people with cerebral palsy where their involvement, you know, with a lot of the muscle activity is almost -- it kind of overpowers everything else.
EH: The name of the product is Cyberlink. You can read more about it at www.brainfingers.com, B-R-A-I-N-F-I-N-G-E-R-S.com. My guests have been Dr. Andrew Junker and Charlie Peters.
I want to thank you for being here today, but before we leave, I would like you to go ahead and give us some context, information besides the website, maybe how people can get ahold of you and whether or not there are any distribution channels for the Cyberlink so people can check it out locally.
AJ: Again, the website is a good place to start, brainfingers.com. Within our website there's a -- one of the links is to distributors. We have distributors, actually, worldwide. The beauty of the Cyberlink, it's language independent, and you can check and see if there are distributors in this area. You can also contact us through the website, or you can call us. Our phone number is 937-767-2674. You can ask for me, Andrew Junker. I'd be happy to talk with anybody in great detail. There are -- under "Success Stories" on our website, there are links to people. You can ask them their experiences.
Program end music and ID:
You've been listening to a broadcast of STAR Point, a production of the MN STAR Program, a System of Technology to Achieve Results. If you would like to provide feedback, be a guest on our show, or if you'd like to find out more about the STAR Program, please visit our Web site at www.admin.state.mn.us/assistivetechnology. My name is Earle Harrison. Thank you for listening.