ALS patient lived with a brain-computer interface for 7 years. Here’s what researchers learned

Anne Thompson

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Mariska Vansteensel, a neuroscientist at University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands, and her colleagues followed an ALS patient who used a brain-computer interface at home for over seven years.Iris Korenberg for Utrecht-BCI Lab

By Timmy Broderick

Aug. 14, 2024

Disability in Health Care Reporting Fellow

Brain-computer interfaces are still years, and several FDA approvals, away from being available on the market. Even though industry leaders tout their eventual use for the general public, the first users of these technologies have been and will continue to be people with disabilities.

One of the primary uses for BCIs is to provide better communication for people who have been paralyzed. Paralysis affects over 5 million people in the United States, which includes diseases like ALS, in which neurodegeneration complicates communication as the disease progresses.

STAT spoke with Mariska Vansteensel, a neuroscientist at University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands and president of the international BCI Society, about the field and about a new study that she and her colleagues just published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

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