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"The important thing is to concentrate. You can't really think about anything else," Hashimoto said. (Reuters) |
TOKYO — Severely paralyzed people could soon have the chance to escape their impairment to the computer-generated world of Second Life, as scientists seek to help the disabled think their way through the virtual world without moving a finger.
"When people are paralyzed, of course their lives become restricted," Junichi Ushiba, an associate professor at the Tokyo-based Keio University, told Reuters on Tuesday, November 27.
"With this technology we can interpret their intention to move, allowing them to go shopping in Second Life or even set up a business."
His research seeks to help paralyzed people use the brain activity to wander their "avatars", alternative proxies in Second Life, about the virtual world.
The technology could enable the player to move around just by thinking of commands like forward, right or left.
Second Life is a virtual world entirely built and owned by its booming population of over nine million subscribed users.
In the animated world, real people use their avatars to "live" alternate identities in a virtual community, complete with homes, cars and shopping malls.
Since it was created in 2003 by the San Francisco-based Linden Labs, it grew exponentially.
Linden Lab says about half a million people regularly visit Second Life, where commercial transactions can be carried out in Linden dollars, convertible to US dollars.
Many corporations, including Dell, MTV and Reuters, have set up virtual offices in Second Life lucrative markets.
Mind Control
Researchers watched one of their team as he made a virtual stroll through Second Life, without using a mouse or keyboard.
"The important thing is to concentrate. You can't really think about anything else," said Yasunari Hashimoto, 23, while the electrodes attached to his scalp picked up changes in his brain activity.
The data are interpreted by a computer, allowing the young scientist to move his online persona smoothly around the streets of Second Life.
The project is still in its early days and the students experimenting with the system must practice for a while and find the best spots on their scalps for the electrodes.
Brain control of computers is already the subject of experiments in many countries.
In the US, researchers are working on the BrainGate system which enables users with an implant to open e-mail and move objects such as wheelchairs.
Ushiba, who spends part of his time working at a medical rehabilitation center, hopes that the new system will be ready by next year to change people's lives.
Volunteer nurse Yoshiko Umeda, who looks after people who suffer from motor neurone disease, a disorder that causes paralysis, believes a lot of her patients may find Ushiba's system very helpful.
"We have a lot of members who can no longer move at all," she told Reuters.
"I think they would very much welcome a system operated by the brain."
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