Brain Implant Helps Man With ALS Control Amazon’s Alexa With His Mind (image-pixabay)
A patient with a degenerative disease was able to command Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant with his mind, the company announced on Monday. The 64-year-old with amphoteric lateral sclerosis, or ALS, always used Alexa using his voice.
But thanks to the brain implant, now he can control the virtual assistant using his mind. The patient’s mobility was limited as a result of his condition. Though he can walk and talk, he is unable to make use of his arms and hands.
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An implant in his blood vessel on the surface of the man’s brain will let him mentally tap icons on an Amazon Fire tablet, brain-computer interface company Synchron said.
With the implant, the patient was able to make video calls, play music, stream shows, control smart home devices such as lights, shop online, and read books by using his mind to direct Alexa.
“To be able to manage important aspects of my environment and control access to entertainment gives me back the independence that I’m losing,” the patient, named only as Mark, said in a release.
The company said that this test was to show how customers could use just their minds to control smart homes with Alexa-compatible devices such as door cameras, plugs and thermostats.
“While many smart home systems rely on voice or touch, we are sending control signals directly from the brain,” Synchron founder and chief executive Tom Oxley said.
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They further stated that the patients can interact with devices in their home hands and voice-free by using their thoughts.
Meanwhile, several other companies including Elon Musk’s Neurolink are working on connecting brains with computers.
In January, the company had installed a brain implant in a man paralyzed after a driving accident. Musk has announced the experiment to be a success and said that his startup is “moving on” to a second test patient in July as its tech improves.
