Nuro announced that a teenager with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) regained some communication ability with its technology.
The fully locked-in patient, referred to as “J,” is completely incapacitated by the debilitating disease. Using the company’s NUOS Extreme 2 system, the 17-year-old girl from Chicago controlled critical communication, music and video content. She achieved this using thought control, without any surgery, training or calibration.
Previous efforts saw attempts to assist J with a number of tools. At first, she had the ability to communicate with an eye gaze system. However, that technology became unreliable and ultimately failed, Nuro said in a news release.
The Waterloo, Ontario, Canada-based surgery-free neurotechnology developer then provided the first implementation of NUOS Extreme 2. This enabled the girl to instantly regain her ability to control those communication avenues.
NUOS Extreme 2 provides neurologically-based communication in a lightweight, smartphone-based mobile solution. The advanced mobile version of Nuro’s architecture allows users to communicate using precisely monitored neurological signals. They can do so instantly, without surgery.
The all-in-one platform sets lightweight neurological sensors on the Nuro Glasses with custom software and free support and updates. Nuro offers it as an alternative to eye gaze systems or invasive neurosurgical procedures to retrieve communication in people suffering from neurological diseases, complex disorders, stroke or even traumatic injuries or infections.
“The world should know what has been achieved,” said Francois Grand, founder and CEO of Nuro. “We are absolutely thrilled to assist ‘J’ with the retrieval of her communication despite her critical condition, and this is once again an incredible demonstration and clinical validation of our surgery-free architecture with some of the most advanced states of incapacitation.”