This Man Wants to Give a Voice to People With Brain Injuries

Dan Bacher’s job is all about the not-so-simple connection between thinking and doing.
Bacher is a 29-year-old engineer who has been working with BrainGate, a collaboration between Brown University and other academic institutions, to pioneer an experimental brain implant that helps people with severe, paralyzing brain injuries use computers to regain movement and task completion. Bacher has been working with BrainGate patient Cathy Hutchinson, who suffered a brain stem stroke in 1996 that left her mostly motionless but with an alert mind. An optimistic sticker on her wheelchair reads “My legs don’t work, but my brain does.” Bacher and BrainGate have implanted a computer chip in her brain that helps her move a robotic arm by thinking about doing so and perform tasks such as picking up a cup of coffee and drinking it through a straw. Though this technology proves immensely helpful, Hutchinson still struggles with something more basic — communication.
Her $10,000 communications device malfunctions often and is time consuming to use. Bacher said watching and seeing this struggle is what inspired him to create a nonprofit called SpeakYourMind Foundation Inc. Bacher is using SpeakYourMind to find low-cost alternatives to expensive communications technology. He just installed an $800 Windows tablet on her wheel chair with new communications software that uses her slight head movements along with algorithms to spell out words on the screen or send emails. Though the software is still new, it’s a step up from Hutchinson’s current form of communication. Before Bacher left Hutchinson’s home after installing the new tablet, it took her 45 minutes to write this short message to The Providence Journal: “I’m excited about the future of sym,” she wrote, using sym as the acronym for SpeakYourMind. “I have faith in sym and I’m very optimistic about the help it will bring to so many.”
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This Injured Veteran Healed Himself. Now He’s Bringing His Secret to Others

When Ted Schlueter returned home to his family farm in Deerfield, Wisc. after sustaining a serious head injury in the Vietnam War, he struggled to make a new life for himself. What he eventually found was that training horses helped him heal his mental and physical wounds, and through techniques he learned at a 1989 Natural Horsemanship seminar in Chicago, he became an expert humane trainer, forgoing the use of whips, bits or similar tools. Along with his business partner Paulette Stelpflug, he established Freedom Stables, where he’s rehabilitated dozens of horses. Now he’s helping disabled veterans, too. AT EASE, A Therapeutic Equine Assisted Self-confidence Experience benefits soldiers suffering from head injuries or PTSD by teaching them how to interact with horses and giving them a safe space to recover. “We help families mend their relationships after people return from duty,” Schlueter told Dori Dahl of The Cambridge News and Deerfield Independent. “The horses help provide a common ground to begin again.”
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