Brain injury: severely disabled patients can communicate and control their environment using a sniffing mechanism.

摘要

Severe disability can result in complete paralysis and inability to communicate. Plotkin et al. have now developed a device that measures 'sniffs', allowing severely disabled individuals to communicate and control their environment. Surviving a severe injury can leave individuals with life-long disabilities ranging from quadriplegia to 'locked-in syndrome' (LIS), in which cognition is intact but the patient is completely paralyzed. Assistive technologies for such patients have focused on residual muscle control-usually of the eye or sphincter muscles-but no effective means of communication is available for LIS.