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Brain injury

Severely disabled patients can communicate and control their environment using a sniffing mechanism

Nature Reviews Neurology volume 6, page 528 (2010)Cite this article

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Severe disability can result in complete paralysis and inability to communicate. Plotkin et al. have now developed a device that measures 'sniffs', allowing severely disabled individuals to communicate and control their environment.

Surviving a severe injury can leave individuals with life-long disabilities ranging from quadriplegia to 'locked-in syndrome' (LIS), in which cognition is intact but the patient is completely paralyzed. Assistive technologies for such patients have focused on residual muscle control—usually of the eye or sphincter muscles—but no effective means of communication is available for LIS.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Plotkin, A. et al. Sniffing enables communication and environmental control for the severely disabled. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107, 14413–14418 (2010)

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  1. Eleanor Beal
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Beal, E. Severely disabled patients can communicate and control their environment using a sniffing mechanism. Nat Rev Neurol 6, 528 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2010.136

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2010.136

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