As reported yesterday in SDR News, the Catholic University of the Low Countries has come up with Mind Speller, which converts brain signals into words and sentences.

The instrument, no bigger than a matchbox, was developed by the microelectronics laboratory Imec and is connected to a type of shower cap containing electrodes. These electrodes register the electrical activity of the brain and the signals captured by the instrument can be transferred to a computer by USB stick and decoded using a specially-developed program.

"The Mind Speller is a generic device that can be easily adjusted to different users. Therefore, it could be a cost-efficient communication solution for people with temporal impairments for whom the existing solutions are too expensive. Moreover, the Mind Speller may help those patients that are not helped with the existing devices driven by motor activity, as the Mind Speller is based on a different principle, using P300 EEG potentials to read people's thoughts," said Professor Van Hulle.

K.U.Leuven is the oldest Catholic University in the world and the oldest university in the Low Countries.