Nursing home residents who do not have use of their arms or hands could have a new tool at their disposal to help them communicate through the written word — and do so in cursive or script.
Quadriplegics and people with “locked-in syndrome” have long been using technologies that allowed them to communicate through eye-movement or blinking. But scientists at France’s Pierre and Marie Curie University-Paris have taken those innovations a step further by developing an “eye-writing” technology.
“Contrary to the current belief, we show that one can gain complete, voluntary control over smooth pursuit eye movements,” researcher Jean Lorenceau, Ph.D., said. The discovery “provides a tool to use smooth pursuit eye movements as a pencil to draw, write or generate a signature.”
Smooth eye movement means the process of sustaining movement of the eye over a longer period of time than typical herky-jerky movements most people use.
Lorenceau said this method allows for a “continuous stream of eye writing that can reflect the writer’s own character.”
Trials for use of the device in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis patients will start in 2013.
From the September 01, 2012 Issue of McKnight's Long-Term Care News