The objective of the SICSE project is to develop a low-cost system that allows people with major motor disabilities to communicate through their brain activity.
There are numerous neurological diseases that can affect the motor system which can lead to serious motor disabilities. An example of people suffering from this pathology is patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). These patients have intact cognitive functions, however, they cannot perform any type of movement.In many cases, these patients can reach a state known as a locked-in syndrome (LIS), a state in which the person is alert and awake, but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis of all the voluntary muscles of the body.For these cases, and even to the point of having limited eye control, the only way in which these patients can recover a certain degree of autonomy is by using the systems grouped under the umbrella term Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). The goal of these systems is to provide patients with a new non-muscular channel that allows them to communicate with the outside world. To achieve this, the electrical activity of the brain is recorded and processed to control a virtual keyboard.The vast majority of these keyboards are controlled by evoked potentials, which are a response of the brain to the presence of certain stimuli. Among these potentials, the one most widely used for the control of virtual keyboards is the visual P300.The objective of this project is motivated by the lack of a communication system based on the detection of P300 potential that is flexible, easy to configure, adaptable to each user as well as being compact and low-cost. With an application of these characteristics, patients with locked-in syndrome would have a tool that would allow them to communicate and overcome isolation.
