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This is fantastic! The surgery to implant the type of intracortical device used in this study would probably be too dangerous for my friend with advanced muscular dystrophy to undergo - has anyone read about similar results with external EEG? She's a nontechnical PC/tablet user, but I could take a week or two to work with getting a device to work for her.

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There are some devices like a P300 speller: http://openvibe.inria.fr/p300-speller-xdawn/

But the big trouble is that external EEG signals must diffuse through the skull and it adds a non-trivial amount of noise. So these style of fine-tuned readings in the original link can be difficult to achieve with high accuracy.

Can she move her eyes? Hybrid BCI (EEG + eye/EMG etc) rather than pure EEG based BCI can be a faster and less taxing solution for her

Yes, she can, as well as make a “normal” range of facial gestures. She can still speak, but her voice keeps getting weaker, and mass-market solutions like Alexa don’t work very well for her.

Thanks for the idea!

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