If turning thoughts into actions is a strategy of making progress, a research team at a Colorado school is poised to significantly advance.
The National Science Foundation awarded a five-year $1.2 million grant earlier this month to professors at Colorado State University to work on brain-computer interaction for people suffering from severe motor impairments, according to a press release. Should the program succeed, people will be able to do something by merely thinking about it and it might open up opportunity for increased occupational therapy jobs.
"With one of the top occupational therapy programs in the country, Colorado State is uniquely positioned to conduct trials with people in their homes so we can truly gauge the effectiveness of these mathematical formulas," said Chuck Anderson, computer science department professor. "One technique we've used is to flash letters on a screen and record the brain wave associated with those letters. We want to improve user interfaces so people can more quickly select letters and type text messages."
In addition to Anderson, the grant's principal investigator, the additional researchers are Patricia Davies and Marla Roll, both professors in the Occupational Therapy Department and Professor William Gavin in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies.
The project aims to mathematically quantify the brain's electrical activity and help people control items such as wheelchairs.