Called the iBrain, this simple-looking contraption is part of an experiment that aims to allow Professor Hawking &mdash; long paralysed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig&rsquo;s disease &mdash; to communicate by merely thinking. <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2012/apr/hawking.jpg" /> It was invented by a team led by Philip Low, a 32-year-old neuroscientist.u00a0&ldquo;The iBrain can collect data in real time in a person&rsquo;s own bed, or when they&rsquo;re watching TV, or doing just about anything,&rdquo; said Dr Low. Of the Hawking experiment, he said, &ldquo;The idea is to see if Stephen can use his mind to create a consistent and repeatable pattern that a computer can translate into, say, a word or letter or a command.&rdquo; The researchers travelled to Professor Hawking&rsquo;s offices in England, fitted him with the iBrain and asked him &ldquo;to imagine that he was scrunching his right hand into a ball&rdquo;. An algorithm was able to discern Professor Hawking&rsquo;s thoughts as signals, which were represented as a series of spikes on a grid. These preliminary results come as Professor Hawking&rsquo;s ability to communicate diminishes as his disease progresses. The physicist now needs several minutes to generate a simple message. &ldquo;Dr Low and his company have done some outstanding work in this field,&rdquo; Professor Hawking said in a statement. &ldquo;I am participating in this project in the hope that I can offer insights and practical advice. I wish&hellip; most importantly, to offer some future hope to people diagnosed with ALS and other neurodegenerative conditions.&rdquo;

Already surrounded by machines that allow him, painstakingly, to communicate, the physicist Stephen Hawking last year donned what looked like a rakish black headband that held a feather-light device the size of a small matchbox

Brain device gives Hawking hope of communicating

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Brain device gives Hawking hope of communicating

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