Hitachi Ltd. and two other entities announced Monday they plan to market by year's end a brain blood flow-measuring device that will enable sufferers of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to respond with "yes" or "no" to questions posed to them.
The electronics and home appliance maker joined hands with Tokyo-based Excel of Mechatronix Corp. and the Japan ALS Association to develop the device, called Kokoro-gatari (Mind-speaker).
ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, affects the motor neurons and causes degeneration throughout the brain and spinal cord. Sufferers gradually lose the power to move, speak or breathe, although they can think and comprehend normally. Some 7,000 people in Japan are said to be afflicted with the disease.
The new device will help ALS patients in a totally locked-in state, who cannot communicate at all. One of the few functions they can control is the flow of blood to their brains -- when they purposely use their brain from a relaxed state the blood level in the frontal lobe increases, and when they return to a relaxed state, the blood level stops changing.
When patients want to respond to a question in the affirmative, they need only to activate their brains by doing something like a mental calculation or think about a song to get the blood flowing. If they want to communicate "no," they should just stay relaxed.