Colds, the flu, and sinus infections have such similar symptoms that it can be tough to know what truly ails you. That said, a few subtle differences can tip you off. Diagnose yourself using this chart (and if you think you may have the flu, head to the doctor right away to get a prescription for Tamiflu).
RELATED: 22 Ways to Survive Cold and Flu Season
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — In surprising new research, experts report that the timing of taking your blood pressure medicine could have a big impact on whether or not you develop type 2 diabetes.
Specifically, the Spanish researchers found that taking blood pressure medications at bedtime rather than waiting until morning may cut the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by more than half.
People with high blood pressure tend to suffer from a phenomenon called “non-dipping,” in which their blood pressure does not substantially decrease during sleep as it does in healthy people, the researchers said in background information.
In an initial study, the investigators found that “non-dippers” tended to have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, compared with people whose blood pressure decreased normally during sleep.
A follow-up clinical trial by the same research group revealed that taking high blood pressure medications right before bed helped lower a person’s sleeping blood pressure, and the risk of type 2 diabetes.
For every 14-point decrease in a person’s average sleeping systolic blood pressure, they experienced a 30 percent reduction in their risk of developing type 2 diabetes, said lead author Dr. Ramon Hermida. Systolic pressure is the top number in a blood pressure reading.
“The results from our prospective study indicate lowering asleep blood pressure could indeed be a significant method for reducing the risk of developing [type 2] diabetes,” said Hermida, who’s a professor of medicine at the University of Vigo in Spain.
So, how are these two very different diseases connected? Hormones such as adrenaline and angiotensin play a role in the development of both high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, explained Dr. Zachary Bloomgarden, a clinical professor of medicine at the Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine in New York City.
A number of blood pressure medications specifically target angiotensin, a hormone that causes blood vessels to constrict and blood pressure to rise, Bloomgarden said. Angiotensin also contributes to increased glucose (sugar) release from the liver and decreased insulin sensitivity. These factors can lead to type 2 diabetes, he said.
Drugs that target angiotensin include angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), ACE inhibitors and beta blockers. All three classes of medication were associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes when taken at bedtime, the researchers found.
“This could be a very important study, which would influence how we treat high blood pressure in people with diabetes and people at risk for diabetes,” Bloomgarden said. “These are some really interesting observations you can fit together into this idea that something’s particularly going on at night.”
After showing that reduced blood pressure during sleep was associated with lower risk of type 2 diabetes, the researchers decided to see whether taking an entire daily dose of one or more blood pressure medications at bedtime could drive a person’s type 2 diabetes risk down even more.
The clinical trial involved more than 2,000 people who had high blood pressure but not diabetes. They were randomly assigned to take all their blood pressure medications either first thing in the morning or right before bed. During an average six-year follow up, 171 of the participants developed type 2 diabetes, the study said.
Study volunteers in the bedtime-treatment group experienced a significant reduction in their sleeping blood pressure, with “non-dipping” occurring in only 32 percent of their group, compared with 52 percent of the patients who took their medication in the morning, according to the study results.
The study found the risk of developing type 2 diabetes was 57 percent lower in the bedtime-treated group than the morning group after researchers adjusted for other complicating factors.
Specifically, the odds of type 2 diabetes dropped 61 percent for people taking angiotensin receptor blockers at bedtime compared to morning. For those on ACE inhibitors at night, the odds went down 69 percent. People on beta blockers reduced their odds of the blood sugar disease by 65 percent when they took their medicine at night, the researchers reported.
“Ingesting hypertension medications at bedtime, instead of upon awakening in the morning, improved asleep blood pressure control and markedly reduced the risk of [type 2] diabetes,” Hermida said.
Earlier studies have failed to show any type 2 diabetes prevention benefit from blood pressure medications, but they may have been flawed because people were asked to take the drugs in the morning, Bloomgarden said.
“Typically we give medicines in the morning and not at night,” he said. “Maybe the ideal time for blood pressure treatment is at night.”
Findings from the new research were published online Sept. 23 in the journal Diabetologia.
More information
For more information on blood pressure medications, visit the American Heart Association.
By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A breast cancer drug that is sometimes used to treat infertility may reduce a couple’s risk of having a pregnancy with multiple babies — but it might also slightly lower their chances of having a baby at all, a new clinical trial suggests.
The study did not find the cancer drug letrozole (Femara) more effective than standard fertility drugs for women with unexplained infertility.
In research reported last year, letrozole actually improved birth rates among women who were infertile due to polycystic ovarian syndrome compared to a widely used fertility drug called clomiphene (Clomid). In contrast, the new study focused on women age 40 and younger whose infertility had no clear cause.
“For them, we can’t say that letrozole is as good as standard drugs when it comes to your chances of going home with a baby,” said lead researcher Dr. Michael Diamond, professor and chair of the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Georgia Regents University, in Augusta.
The study was published Sept. 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
When a couple is unable to conceive and tests find no cause, doctors often try ovarian stimulation, where hormonal medications are used to encourage ovulation.
That’s especially true when the woman is younger than 35, noted Dr. Sheeva Talebian, an infertility specialist and assistant clinical professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. The success rate with ovarian stimulation declines with age, so older women typically go straight to in-vitro fertilization, she added.
Traditionally, clomiphene has been the drug of choice for ovarian stimulation, explained Talebian.
If that failed, the next step would be gonadotropin, a more powerful injection drug.
“But in recent years, we’ve been shying away from gonadotropin because of the higher risk of multiples,” Talebian said.
At the same time, more doctors have been turning to letrozole, a breast cancer drug that also stimulates ovulation in younger women.
Dr. Brooke Hodes-Wertz, a reproductive endocrinologist at NYU Langone Medical Center’s Fertility Center in New York City, said, “In some centers, it’s now the first-line therapy for unexplained infertility.”
However, there have been no clinical trials to test whether letrozole is actually better, or even as good as clomiphene for unexplained infertility, Diamond said.
For the new study, Diamond and his team randomly assigned 900 women to undergo ovarian stimulation with either clomiphene, gonadotropin or letrozole — for up to four treatment cycles.
In the end, 32 percent of women on gonadotropin gave birth, versus 23 percent of women on clomiphene, and 19 percent of those on letrozole, the study said.
However, the difference between the clomiphene and letrozole groups was not significant in statistical terms, Talebian pointed out. That means the result could be due to chance.
Gonadotropin led to a higher birth rate, but it also raised couples’ odds of having twins or triplets. Eight percent of women on the drug had twins, and 2 percent had triplets, the research revealed.
One percent of women on clomiphene had twins, as did 3 percent of those taking letrozole, the study found. None of the women on either clomiphene or letrozole had triplets.
Both Talebian and Hodes-Wertz stressed that point. “As a field, we’ve been moving away from gonadotropins because of the risk of multiples,” Hodes-Wertz said. “This study supports that.”
She was not convinced, however, that the results prove clomiphene is better than letrozole for unexplained infertility.
Talebian agreed. “I think the findings suggest they are comparable,” she said.
And Hodes-Wertz said the two drugs appear comparable in another important way: There were no differences in the risks of birth defects or newborn complications. That’s reassuring, she explained, because past animal research had hinted that the risks might be higher with letrozole.
According to Talebian, some women do fare better on letrozole because it carries a lower risk of side effects like hot flashes and mood swings. So that’s yet another factor to consider, she said.
Diamond agreed that individual couples have to talk to their doctors about the best drug option for them.
In some cases, though, the choice is not the doctors’ or patients’. “Sometimes it’s whatever insurance will pay for,” Hodes-Wertz said.
The study was partly funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. None of the drugs’ manufacturers had a role in the trial, the researchers said.
More information
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has more on infertility treatment.
By Steven Reinberg
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — For patients in intensive care units who need a catheter so they can receive medications easily, one placed in the vein under the collarbone appears to lower the risk of bloodstream infections and clots, a new study finds.
The researchers reported that it lowered those risks by two to three times when compared to catheters placed in the large vein in the groin or in the jugular vein in the neck.
“There has been an ongoing controversy about where to place these large catheters that would have the least risk of life-threatening infections,” said senior researcher Dr. Leonard Mermel, from Lifespan in Providence, R.I.
These infections are usually caused by bacteria on the skin that cling to the catheter as it is inserted and find their way into the bloodstream, he explained. In this setting, a catheter is a long tube that is inserted into the body so medicines can be delivered to the patient easily.
The one drawback to inserting a catheter into the vein under the collarbone is the risk for causing a collapsed lung. This can occur if the catheter misses the vein and punctures a lung as it is inserted, Mermel said.
In this study, 1.5 percent of patients having a catheter placed under the collarbone suffered a collapsed lung, as did 0.5 percent of patients who had a catheter placed in the neck, the researchers found.
Mermel said that although placing a catheter in the vein under the collarbone is preferred, a lot depends on how well the person placing the catheter has been trained. Using ultrasound to guide the placement of the catheter is one way of avoiding complications such as a collapsed lung, he added.
Lead researcher Dr. Jean-Jacques Parienti, from the department of biostatistics and clinical research at Cote de Nacre University Hospital in Caen, France, said, “The [under the collarbone] route is the safest for the patient, provided that everything is done to reduce the risk of mechanical complications during insertion.”
The report was published Sept. 24 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dr. Mark Astiz, chairman of medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, said the new study was “consistent with earlier reports and suggests if the operator is well trained in [under the collarbone] catheter placement, that may be the preferred site.”
For the study, researchers randomly assigned more than 3,000 patients to have catheters placed in one of the three locations.
Dr. Anthony Rossi, director of the division of cardiac critical care medicine at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, said bloodstream infections are less likely when a catheter is placed in the vein under the collarbone because the skin at the collarbone has less bacteria than either the neck or the groin.
In addition, catheters under the collarbone can be secured more easily than in the neck or groin because there is less movement in the chest than in those other areas. This makes it easier to keep those catheters cleaner, Rossi said.
“Anything we can do to prevent bloodstream infections is important,” he said. “Most people don’t die from a [collapsed lung], but the mortality from a bloodstream infection can be 40 percent or more, and they are hard to treat in the critically ill.”
More information
Visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine for more on critical care units.
Photo: Lammily
The Lammily doll—the so-called “Normal Barbie” with realistic body proportions—is joining the ranks of women everywhere: she’s getting her period.
But she’s more than prepared for this crucial rite of passage, thanks to the $10 Period Party extension kit. Described as “the fun way to explain the menstrual cycle to kids,” creator Nickolay Lamm wants to start a conversation about periods and the stigmas that surround it.
“It’s just what happens in real life,” Lamm told TIME. “We wanted to put it on the doll so it’s not a scary thing.”
Which is why the kit comes with an educational pamphlet explaining what to expect from a menstrual cycle plus a pair of doll underwear, 19 colored pads, a calendar and stickers to track periods.
The video ad for the Period Party kit shows why young girls might prefer to learn about their menstrual cycles from their doll rather than their parents.
A graphic designer turned toymaker, Lamm created the Lammily Doll in 2014, which comes with a sticker-extension pack to add other things that can be seen as taboo, like cellulite, freckles, acne, scrapes, bruises, scars and moles.
Lamm cited Donald Trump’s controversial comments about Megyn Kelly after the first GOP debate, when Trump said “there was blood coming out of [Kelly’s] eyes, blood coming out of her wherever” in August.
“I don’t want to make this a whole political project or anything, but I think when [Trump] said that it was just an example of the overall culture where menstruation is very taboo, and not only taboo, but some people use it as an insult,” Lamm says.
The Lammily doll is dubbed “Normal Barbie” because of her normal shape, modeled after an average 19-year-old woman’s measurements, based on CDC data. The doll starts at $25, with extension packs and extra fashion options starting at $7.
This article originally appeared on Time.com.
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Unexplained chronic fatigue, muscle pain and problems with thinking are experienced by a quarter of Gulf War veterans, and new research suggests exposure to DNA-damaging chemicals may cause this condition, known as Gulf War Syndrome.
Previous studies have suggested that the symptoms stem from a malfunction of mitochondria, the site in cells where molecules that power the body are made. The mitochondria have their own DNA, separate from the cell’s.
Increases in mitochondrial DNA damage the mitochondria’s ability to produce energy, leaving the individual feeling slow and tired. And the new study found direct evidence of increased damage to this cell powerhouse among Gulf War vets.
Researchers analyzed blood samples to measure the amount of mitochondrial DNA and degree of damage to this DNA among veterans with Gulf War Illness (GWI).
The vets not only had more mitochondrial DNA, but also more mitochondrial DNA damage than otherwise healthy adults, the researchers found.
Study author Yang Chen, a doctoral researcher at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences in New Jersey, presented the findings at a recent meeting of the American Psychological Association in Tampa, Fla.
“Future studies are necessary to confirm these findings and determine their association with mitochondrial function. Work in this area may guide new diagnostic testing and treatments for veterans suffering from GWI,” the study’s authors wrote.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides more information on Gulf War Syndrome.
By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Dizzy spells that occur after you’ve been standing for a few minutes might be an early warning sign of a serious neurological disease and an increased risk of premature death, a Harvard study has found.
For some people, this dizziness is caused by a gradual drop in blood pressure. And this “suggests the nervous system is failing and isn’t maintaining blood pressure while you’re standing,” said lead author Dr. Christopher Gibbons, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
The condition is called orthostatic hypotension, and between 29 percent and 64 percent of people suffering from this blood pressure decline died during the 10-year study, depending on how quickly they became dizzy. By comparison, only 9 percent of healthy people in the study’s “control” group died.
But, this study’s findings don’t mean that everyone who becomes dizzy while standing needs to be alarmed. There are a number of other causes of dizziness, including diabetes, dehydration, an inner ear problem or blood pressure medication, Gibbons said.
Dr. Paul Wright, chair of neurology at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y., added, “Patients should not be scared that if their blood pressure drops due to medication or dehydration that they are at a high risk of mortality.”
It’s also important to note that the new study was designed to find an association between orthostatic hypotension and a risk of early death; it cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
Findings from the study were published online Sept. 23 in the journal Neurology.
Gibbons and his colleagues looked at both orthostatic hypotension (OH) and delayed orthostatic hypotension (DOH). OH is defined as a drop in blood pressure that occurs within three minutes of standing, while DOH is a blood pressure decline that takes place after three minutes of standing, according to background information in the study.
“This is a person who’s been fine standing, and gradually gets worse and worse and worse, until they have to sit down,” Gibbons said. “We’re talking about people who feel like they’re going to faint after standing in line at the grocery store or the Department of Motor Vehicles.”
Orthostatic hypotension becomes more common as people get older, Gibbons said. By the time people are in their 60s or 70s, between 5 to 10 percent will have developed the condition, he added.
In the study, researchers reviewed the medical records of 230 people who underwent testing in 2002 and 2003 to see if their bodies were properly regulating their blood pressure and heart rate. Ten-year follow-up data was available for 165 of these people.
In the 10-year follow-up group, 48 started out with delayed orthostatic hypotension and 42 had been diagnosed with full-fledged OH, the study said.
The 10-year death rate for people who started out with delayed orthostatic hypotension was 29 percent, the study said. About 54 percent of participants with delayed orthostatic hypotension wound up progressing to OH within a decade, the investigators found.
Of the people who started out with OH, the 10-year death rate was 64 percent, according to the study.
Of those who had OH at the 10-year follow-up, 35 percent had developed a degenerative brain disease such as Parkinson’s or dementia, the study said.
The results show that people who get dizzy even after long minutes of standing may be suffering very early signs of a neurological disorder, such as Parkinson’s disease, Gibbons said. Orthostatic hypotension may serve as an early clue that something might be going haywire in a person’s nervous system.
“Doctors need to be aware that a drop in blood pressure associated with dizziness could signify a serious problem, and additional evaluation may be necessary,” he said.
However, Gibbons added that people who find themselves becoming dizzy while standing should not automatically assume that they’re developing a degenerative brain disease.
The researchers suspect that blood pressure medication likely caused the dizziness that occurred in the people initially diagnosed with DOH who did not end up progressing to full OH, he said.
“By no means does it signify that they have [degenerative brain disease],” Gibbons said. “We don’t think this is an enormous problem across the population.”
Wright, who’s also chair of neurology at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New Hyde Park, N.Y., called the data “striking.” But, he pointed out that the study involved a small number of patients that grew smaller during the follow-up period.
“A larger prospective study would be helpful” as a follow-up, he added.
“The data warrants a deeper and more extensive evaluation of this type of patient. It appears that consistent drops in blood pressure are not as benign as once thought,” Wright said.
More information
For more on orthostatic hypotension, visit the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Trying to “guilt” kids into exercise may not work, a new study suggests.
Researchers from the University of Georgia found that middle school students were less likely to be physically active if they didn’t feel in control of their exercise choices or if they felt pressured by adults to get more exercise.
Kids who felt they could make their own decisions about physical activity were more likely to regard themselves as someone who exercises, which made them more likely to do so, the researchers said.
That raises the question, “Can we put these children in situations where they come to value and enjoy the act of being physically active?” lead author Rod Dishman, a professor of kinesiology, said in a university news release.
Children’s activity levels typically fall 50 percent between fifth and sixth grades, the authors noted in the September issue of the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
Dishman and his colleagues said they are looking for ways to help more children identify themselves as someone who exercises.
“Just like there are kids who are drawn to music and art, there are kids who are drawn to physical activity. But what you want is to draw those kids who otherwise might not be drawn to an activity,” Dishman said.
Above all, parents and teachers shouldn’t make children feel guilty for not being physically active, he said.
“The best thing is to do it because it’s fun. It’s the kids who say they are intrinsically motivated who are more active than the kids who aren’t,” Dishman concluded.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about keeping children active.
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A new mouse study suggests that a drug with a known safety record in humans might be a new weapon in the fight against the potentially deadly intestinal infection known as C. difficile.
The drug is called ebselen, and it was well-tolerated in humans when tested as a possible treatment in a variety of clinical trials, including for stroke and bipolar disorder. Although ebselen has never been approved as a treatment for any condition in humans, the current research team thought the drug might help prevent the spread of infection in people with C. difficile.
When the researchers gave ebselen to infected mice, the drug appeared to knock out the toxic activity of C. difficile without inflicting the collateral damage on good bacteria that’s normally associated with antibiotic treatment, the study reported.
The results were “very encouraging,” said study senior author Matthew Bogyo, a professor of pathology and of microbiology and immunology in the department of pathology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. “Specifically, we find that oral [ebselen] dosing of mice infected with C. difficile resulted in nearly complete blockage of the damage to gut tissues that cause the symptoms in humans,” Bogyo said.
It’s important to remember, however, that research done in animals doesn’t always turn out the same in humans. So, right now, it’s unknown whether ebselen would be effective or safe in treating people with C. difficile.
The study, which was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, was published in the Sept. 23 online issue of Science Translational Medicine.
C. difficile — or Clostridium difficile — is a bacterial infection that targets the intestine causing watery diarrhea,
fever, loss of appetite, nausea and
abdominal pain. This pathogen caused an estimated 500,000 hospitalizations and 29,000 deaths in the United States in 2011, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Currently, the infection is treated with specific antibiotics. But antibiotics kill “both the ‘bad’ pathogenic bacteria as well as the ‘good’ native gut bacteria that help to keep us healthy,” Bogyo said.
The result is a weakened gut environment that puts the general population at a higher risk for getting C. difficile in the first place, while undermining the effectiveness of antibiotic treatment once an infection takes hold, he explained.
“This is why people who get C. difficile tend to relapse and get it again and again,” Bogyo said.
Fecal transplantation, in which good bacteria is harvested from a healthy patient and placed inside a sick patient’s gut, is one non-antibiotic treatment. However, Bogyo cautioned that the long-term ramification of this process remains unclear.
So, Bogyo and his colleagues turned to ebselen, a non-antibiotic compound designed to block the toxic activity of C. difficile, without actually killing it altogether.
The study involved a number of rounds of laboratory and animal testing, with focus centering on ebselen’s impact on the activity of “Toxin B.” Toxin B is C. difficile’s main toxin.
Mice injected with ebselen-treated Toxin B molecules survived. Mice exposed to untreated molecules died within two days, according to the report.
Similarly, the researchers found that when mice with an antibiotic-resistant strain of C. difficile were treated with oral doses of ebselen, they experienced almost no cell damage.
“While we can only know how effective the strategy will be in humans once we start a clinical trial, we feel that our results strongly suggest that the drug will be effective, and should help to treat symptoms while allowing the good bacteria to return and control the infection,” Bogyo said.
Philip Tierno, a professor of microbiology and pathology with the NYU School of Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, described the findings as “very important.”
“It’s not a new concept,” Tierno said. “The notion that one could attack the infectious process by focusing on a bacteria’s virulence, rather than on killing it off, dates back many decades,” he explained.
“But it’s taken us 70 or so years of antibiotic overuse and resistance for us to finally realize that the paradigm has to change. That you can achieve effective control of an infection by using blocking agents that neutralize the toxic aspect of bacteria, without actually having to kill it and all the healthy flora around it. And the use of this drug for this infection seems to do just that,” Tierno added.
“Of course this was done in a mouse model,” he cautioned. “So you have to wait until you complete trials in humans. But cells are cells and bacteria are bacteria, so if we can affect the same mechanism in our body, this should work.”
More information
There’s more on C. difficile at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 23, 2015 (HealthDay News) — The telegraph. The telephone. The Internet. All innovations in communication that have changed the world.
But the silent exchange of information using brain-to-brain communication? Surely the power to read minds remains the stuff of science fiction.
Perhaps not. A team of researchers from the University of Washington now contends that it’s possible to link up the brains of two separate individuals, in two separate spaces, so that one person can figure out what the other is thinking.
How? By digitizing the electrical nerve activity tied to a person’s thoughts, translating that activity/thought into a specific signal, and transmitting that signal over the Internet in patterns that can be understood by another person’s brain.
All without a spoken word.
“Brain-to-brain interface is a field of research that is just at the very beginning,” said study author Andrea Stocco, an assistant professor of psychology with the University of Washington’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences in Seattle. “The ability to easily and directly communicate very complicated concepts and images from one brain to another brain is a long way off in the future.
“But what we have been able to show is that the clear exchange of simple information between a pairing of brains is possible,” he added. “And that, I think, is a big step forward. And it establishes a very solid foundation to build on. Which is very exciting.”
Stocco and his colleagues share the details of their brain communication experiments in the Sept. 23 issue of PLOS ONE.
At its core, brain interfacing refers to the ability of two brains to “speak” to one another directly, by sending and receiving neural messages in the form of electrical signals. Those signals can then be picked up by brain wave-reading technology — such as an electroencephalogram (EEG) — and transmitted via the Internet.
In earlier work, the team had enabled the brain signals of one individual to prompt hand movement in another individual located in a separate space.
Building on that, the latest investigation involved 10 men and women, between the ages of 19 and 39, who were randomly paired and then sent to two different, darkened lab locations roughly 1 mile apart.
Although neither participant could actually see or hear one another, each was hooked up to a EEG-type machine.
Then each engaged in a question-and-answer game, in which one person thought of an object (such as “dog”) drawn from a specific category (such as “animals”), while the other sent online questions to try to guess what the object was.
The object-thinker, however, could only respond by paying attention to a “yes” or “no” flashing light, with each answer generating slightly different types of neural activity.
“Yes” or “no” answers were, in turn, digitized and sent back into the visual cortex of the questioner’s brain via the EEG pathway. Once received, “yes” signals triggered perceptions of a quick flash of light, while “no” answers did not. Questioners were then asked to interpret the answers, after having been informed that a flash of light meant “yes.”
After 20 rounds, “we found that people were really good at playing the game,” said Stocco. “On average, people were able to correctly identify the objects more than 70 percent of the time. And because each game involved a series of questions and answers before guessing the object, we found that people were actually able to correctly understand responses 93 percent of the time.”
Stocco said that the hope is to eventually facilitate true two-way communication, while cutting out the “middle man” by eliminating the need for Web-based communication entirely.
“The goal is to get to communicating only thoughts from one brain to the other and back, and to do so with complex concepts,” Stocco said. “What we’ve achieved is already very cool. But what this has the potential to lead to is a whole new form of communication.”
More information
There’s more on the brain interfacing at the ALS Association.
