For less than $100, University of Washington researchers
have designed a computer-interfaced drawing pad that helps scientists see
inside the brains of children with learning disabilities while they read and
write.
The device and research using it to study the brain patterns
of children will be presented June 18 at the Organization for Human Brain
Mapping meeting in Seattle. A paper describing the tool, developed by the UW’s
Center on Human Development and Disability, was published this spring in
Sensors, an online open-access journal. “Scientists needed a tool that allows
them to see in real time what a person is writing while the scanning is going
on in the brain,” said Thomas Lewis, director of the center’s Instrument
Development Laboratory. “We knew that fiber optics were an appropriate tool.
The question was, how can you use a fiber-optic device to track handwriting?”