Deans' stroke musings: Thought-controlled musical instrument may help stroke patients

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Thought-controlled musical instrument may help stroke patients

But is it better than just figuring out what musical instrument the survivor can play with the deficits they have?

Thought-controlled musical instrument may help stroke patients

Neurologists have created a hands-free, thought-controlled musical instrument they hope will help empower and rehabilitate patients with motor disabilities such as those from stroke, spinal cord injury or amputation.

"There is great potential for the Encephalophone to hopefully improve rehabilitation of stroke patients and those with motor disabilities," Deuel says.
"The Encephalophone is a musical instrument that you control with your thoughts, without movement," explained Thomas Deuel, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, and first author of a study detailed in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

"There is great potential for the Encephalophone to hopefully improve rehabilitation of stroke patients and those with motor disabilities," Deuel said.
The Encephalophone collects brain signals through a cap that transforms specific signals into musical notes.

The invention is coupled with a synthesiser, allowing the user to create music using a wide variety of instrumental sounds.

In an experiment, the researchers found that participants were able to use the instrument to correctly recreate musical tones, with no prior training.
The Encephalophone can be controlled via two independent types of brain signals -- either those associated with the visual cortex (closing one's eyes), or those associated with thinking about movement.

The researchers found that control by eye closing was more accurate than control by imagining movements.

Control by thinking about movement may be the most useful for disabled patients, and Deuel plans to continue researching this application.
The Encephalophone is based on brain-computer interfaces using an old method, called electroencephalography, which measures electrical signals in the brain.