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Andrew Junker, Ph.D., Founder of Brain Actuated Technologies
Tags:Assistive Technology, Events, Innovators, ProfilesÂ
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  Andrew and Patricia Junker |
By Eric Morrison
Inquiries: |
 The Company And The Technology
The Brainfingers system, also known as Cyberlink, shatters barriers in human-technology interaction by operating as a more direct interface between the user and the computer. The system has eleven channels, or virtual ‘fingers,’ that convert electrical signals across a spectrum of frequencies emanating from the brain into digitized control inputs so that individuals with disabilities can operate on-screen keyboards, AAC devices, educational software, word processors, and other applications. In some cases, Brainfingers has proven the only way to “unlock” communication from persons who have no ability to control their body or vocal cords.
Some of the Brainfinger outputs are controlled by the impulses produced by lateral eye and small facial muscle movements. Even more intriguingly, seven of the outputs are controlled with the alpha and beta brainwave activity that accompany natural cognition. Andrew explains,
The software has two parts to it. One is the training part; the other is the launch part. The training part teaches people to bring under conscious control signals from their forehead, the launch part allows them to use these controls to trigger computer events…this gives them access to every event in the computer—every key of the keyboard, every mouse event. So with Brainfingers they can potentially control any third party software that runs on their PC. This is a very liberating possibility for individuals with disabilities.
On Design
Much of the design of Brainfingers lies in Andrew’s expertise in measuring impulses at the surface of the skin, which then allow him to infer cognitive processes. However, the operant principle that makes the system truly effective is the concept of feedback (a part of the output returned to a system as input). Feedback is the very basis for sensing, assessing, and modifying variables relating to performance. For persons with severe disabilities, this feedback loop is often open: there is a loss of contact and information. This is a deficiency that Brainfingers effectively resupplies. As Andrew explains,
If you know the dynamics of a system, you can then put the appropriate loop closure or feedback around it to improve its performance, like a carburetor vacuum line on an engine that stabilizes its performance. In a sense, that’s the power of Brainfingers. Some people with cerebral palsy, ALS, or brain injuries start to reconnect. They often can achieve a control that people didn’t think was possible. It’s all about feedback, giving people something useful so that they can then feel connected.
Unique Aspects Of The Company
While most other brainwave researchers are interested in measuring impulses all over the head, often to map spatial voltage variances across hemispheres, Andrew explains he is interested in the interface that occurs at the forehead—one that can lead into nearly infinite insights and possibilities. As both a researcher and yoga instructor, he explains that this stretch of anatomical real estate can provide an electrical representation of,
…the interaction of the brain and the body. We’re all trying to go through life achieving some balance in our interactions. People with disabilities are also trying to achieve that, too.
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  The Brainfingers System |
Impact Of The Technology Interaction
What people with the most severe physical disabilities and brain injuries can attain using Brainfingers can be phenomenal. Andrew indicates that the system can be used to control computer events within minutes because of our fundamentally similar forehead brain-body electrical patterns. However, for many persons with disabilities,
The balance point has been shifted. Their body is operating, say, with different muscle tension, and so on. So the wonderful thing about Brainfingers is that it’s giving them an internal view, through visual and auditory feedback. It’s feedback as to what’s going on inside of them. Often they’re getting this feedback in a way they’ve never experienced before.
This restoration of feedback and natural control over environment and communications can result in markedly increased motivation, and, for some, in greater body control—stability of the head and better posture, for instance. In one remarkable case, the use of Brainfingers by a woman with a severe brain stem injury enabled her to regain the ability to move her arms, then to interact with her young daughter again through control of an on-screen keyboard. In a way, Andrew’s technology turns users into researchers.
On Collaboration
Andrew emphasizes the sense of collaboration he discovers in working with his users. He explains,
Over the years I’ve had the honor of interacting with people with severe disabilities—amazing people. Brainfingers is beyond the simple switch, it’s beyond the mouse—it’s considered even now a new technology. People call me when nothing else works. They’ve tried the big red button, eye-gaze, infrared, and head tracking. Being at the core a researcher, I find that every time I work with someone, it’s like a new experiment.
Knowing Users And User Requirements
The externalization of control over computers using the mind grew, interestingly, out of an inward scientific journey. The US Air Force, recognizing Andrew’s special gifts for research, sponsored a Ph.D. program for him—one that he tailored to focus on the study of brainwaves as part of a “personal fascination and passion to understand more about myself, to know what’s going on inside.” Andrew built the first brain controlled simulator for the Air Force, and once his research discoveries came to the attention of insightful experts in the disability field, he was contacted about the possibility of applying them to support others with a need to reconnect with the world.
Changing Perspectives
One of the greatest challenges to the potential of a technology like Brainfingers is embedded in our own societal conceptions of what technology is and how we can interact with it, as well as limitations in our notions of how we can regulate our own cognition. As Andrew somewhat resignedly states, “Brainfingers creates dilemmas in the world.” In some cases, Brainfingers challenges entrenched notions about how we have diagnosed the capabilities, how we perceive a child, or what we are willing to fund for him or her. Ultimately the impact of Brainfingers may demand nearly as much flexibility and imagination on the part of the fields of education and disability services as has been invested by its creator. Andrew’s major marketing strategy is to find people “Who can get excited.”
Commercialization
Andrew confided to NCTI that he has just licensed aspects of his technology to OCZ Technology, a computer gaming company, because:
Brainfingers is probably the fastest click in the world. We’re creating a product called the Neural Impulse Actuator, which will come out as a video game controller. OCZ took it to a consumer electronics show and people found that within minutes they could shoot faster, and they could move forward and backward and left and right. People are starting to find they have a competitive edge with Brainfingers.
He stresses, though, that this speed and efficiency offers something dramatic for kids with disabilities: a substantial reduction in workload that can allow them to work for longer periods with less effort.
Reader Comments
Gayl Bowser on August 27, 2007 at 12:11 am EDTHello Andrew!
Thanks for participating in this blog with us. I’ve seen Brainfingers at several conferences and have had the chance to try a demonstration a couple of times. I’m fascinated with the ways my own brain seems to learn the operation of the device. I was able to use it pretty quickly.But I’m wondering about children. As a special educator, I have worked with children with disabilities for many years. Can you share your experiences in working with children who have physical disabilities or traumatic brain injury and how the product works for them?
I’m also curious about what you think the long-term practical applications will be. I see that you’re dipping your feet into the world of gaming. Are there other applications that you imagine investigating in the near future? As I understand it, the primary application of Brainfingers right now is cursor control and movement on the screen. Can you imagine a time when we might use a tool like yours for productivity in areas like writing and math?
Andrew Junker on August 29, 2007 at 3:06 pm EDTDear Gayl you asked how do I find children respond to Brainfingers. My answer is I find it is absolutely amazing how kids respond to Brainfingers. I originially created Brainfingers as a way to look inside. Using technology I wanted to personally understand more about myself. And I am happy to say it worked! So imagine taking a technology that gives us a look at ourselves that is free of someother’s interpretation and you have a mind with a child’s innocence and then strap on a headband. For kids of all abilities using Brainfingers can be an exciting experience.
One of the key differences between Brainfingers and any other device that measures the subtle neural impulses available at the surface is that Brainfingers embraces the brain-body connection. In fact the opening screen, after calibration, is a presentation of ones’ brain, body and eye activity.
Add to this the fact that a child with a severe disability may not have had the opportunity to control anything in their environment with success and now they are presented with a subtle inner connection and it can be at the least exciting and maybe empowering.
Much of my experience with kids with CP for example are at conferences where I go as a vendor of a technology, CSUN for example. Recently I started working with the Drake Music Project of Scotland. As part of our collaboration we added the ability to play music with Brainfingers. At this point it is a simple control. At the most rescent CSUN conference I had a number of children use Brainfingers and gave them the ability to control music. It was amazing to watch the child start to sit up in their wheel chair, the experssion on their face became one of pure joy as they played the music. My “interpretation” was that they had something they could control for the first time so it was interesting to pay attention.
So this is to say that I feel kids do really well with Brainfingers. In fact kids with severe disabilities seem to control Brainfingers in ways that I can not control it. This is shown in a case study done by Danis Marler, a teacher in the LA schools. Her case study can be downloaded from our website under success stories.
I had the opportunity to work with Ms Marler and one of the important things I finally got was that she was looking for a technology that would allow kids with multiple disabilities the ability to achieve direct selection. For them switch control was not enough, or should I say they had trouble with responding to timed events. Her kids demonstrated that they could move a cursor and click to achive direct selection.
What is noteworthy is that the kids at the start of the study had attention spans of maybe 40 sec. At the end of the study they would play on the computer for an hour playing with Reader Rabbit software. Brainfingers gave them direct access to a computer.
Direct selection as a form of control is what we all want.
Andrew Junker on August 29, 2007 at 3:26 pm EDTGayl, you also asked what do I see as the future of Brainfingers. We are engaged in some exciting new things with Brainfingers. Certainly as a video game controller, we will learn some new things.
As it turns out a good many video gammers suffer from repetitive strain injury (RSI). One of the gammers who is now helping us bring the Brainfingers technology to the gamming market had to stop competition because of RSI due to mouse clicking so much. Once he started using Brainfingers for control his RSI reduced and now he reports it is not an issue. He also finds that he is more competitive now than when he was using a mouse for clicking.
I am excited that gammers will have an opportunity to work with Brainfingers. It will be called the Neural Impulse Actuator and sold by OCZ Technologies. I was not a video game player before so did not appreciate the amazing skill gammers possess. Brainfingers is about learning to bring under conscious control the subtle aspects of our body and brain. In the past as I watched gammers, all I experienced was that they were hitting the keys of computer and clicking as fast as they could, not appreciating the complicated control process they were undertaking. Now that I have worked to modify Brainfingers so it can be used to control virtual switches and joysticks I have a better understanding of what the gammer is doing.
I anticipate that the gammer will at first use the muscle and glance controls for game play but then they will start to make use of the beta and alpha brainwave fingers that are available as controls. They will teach us how to bring our brainwaves under control.
Heidi Silver-Pacuilla on August 29, 2007 at 8:45 pm EDTAndrew - mothers everywhere are wondering WHAT gamers are doing! We open the bedroom door, look in, and see the kid hard at work, typing a mile a minute, clicking, navigating, working with a dozen windows open on the desktop, and know a lot of literacy and strategy is going on. But it sure is hard to get a handle on, appreciate, value, recognize, etc. Any help understanding cognitive function while gaming would be appreciated, and even more so if the information could be fed to game developers. I’m watching for the wide-spread public adoption of educational games that teach about the complexities of ecologies or neurology, etc. I’ll stay tuned!
imhookt1 on September 29, 2007 at 5:32 pm EDTHi Andrew, this is my 1st. time on this forum. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a multi- Award winning one handed, one hooked keyboardist, I perform in the Blues & Jazz genre’s live acoustically. And I also delve into the world of painting with sounds, an experimental sound artist if you will, I work with various electronic computer based software/hardware. eg; MIDI sequencing applications, sound modules, audio workstations, etc. composing soundtracks for potential short film, documentary, video, commercials, etc. I’ve been one handed for over 30 yrs. now, losing my left hand and wrist in a machine shop accident. On top of that I recently suffered a debilitating Traumatic Brain Injury. I am a self taught professional musician. I was a bass and guitar player before the machine shop accident and I’ve for many years have pondered the idea of the brain/computer neural interface that will convert neural/brain signals into possible MIDI or other music notation/compositional etc. software apps. for Mac. OS’s. But, I don’t have the knowledge to implement this idea.
Thanks to you when I saw your show on my local PBS station, it triggered my curiosity again. Many kudos for your genius ideas. My question to you is; I’m wondering do you have any plans to pursue this possibility or have you done so already? If so I’m very interested in maybe acquiring these. I reside in the Twin cities MN. area where we have a STAR Point Project program. I’m also an Artist Ambassador for http://www.vsaartsmn.org this is an organization, MN. chapter that helps disabled artists. We are in our 3rd. year of going into schools as Disabled artists speaking on our various art forms mainly focusing on the positive life skills learning formats. I myself also teach about the importance of preserving our American Jazz & Blues heritages and have been doing this sort of educational lecture/speaking engagement for many many moons. I truly enjoy sharing my gift with all who partake in my sessions, showing them what I can do as a disabled performer along with passing on my “Never say Never” life wisdoms http://www.michaelthehookdeutsch.com you can go my website to view my short documentary, it is concise and straight to the point. I’m quite sure you’ll enjoy it! A very unique and enthralling educational video. Feel free to share this with others, too. You can also hear my mp3’s from there too. I anxiously await your response on this matter, Michael the”Hook” Deutsch 612-378-9173 “I bid you and yours much success with all your endeavors.” Hoping you’ll be able help me with my inquisitiveness or steer me in right direction of how and maybe where I can acquire this type of technology. Peace
