Wheelchair-bound Lindsay Peterson has little motor control and cannot move her hands.
But thanks to newly developed technology, the 11-year-old is learning how to "fingerpaint" - with her eyes.Lindsay and about 10 other almost completely paralyzed students at the Campus School in Newton, Mass., can now have colors appear wherever they look around a computer screen.
The innovation "EagleEyes" project was developed by Boston College researchers who had already figured out a way to move a cursor on a computer screen using only one's eyes.
Two of the researchers, James Gips and Joseph Tecce, said they do this by placing electrodes on the surface of a person's skin around their eyes to monitor exactly where that person's eyes are focused.
They say the electrodes detect the pattern of electrical activity, which changes depending on where a person is looking, and that information is fed into the computer, controlling the position of the cursor.
In "eye-painting," the computer uses this technology to "paint" a pattern of colors on the computer screen wherever the user directs his or her eyes.
Gips and Tecce, along with fellow Boston College researcher Peter Olivieri, were honored this year by Discovery magazine, which selected their work on eye control of cursors - their "EagleEyes" project - as a finalist in their Awards for Technological Innovation.
Tecce says "eye-painting" has given the students "satisfaction which they really can't get in any other way."
But the researchers say "EagleEyes" is also helping the students overcome another handicap, an inability to speak.
The researchers do this by putting pictures of things on the screen that are important to the student. For instance, in one section, there is a picture of food, while in other sections there are representations of medicine, a family, and a TV. If the student looks at the picture of food for a fraction of a second, the computer speaks, saying "I am hungry" for the benefit of a caretaker or family member nearby.
As soon as the student has selected the picture of food, several representations of items the student might wish to eat appear on the computer screen. If the student looks at a picture of a hamburger, the computer speaks again, saying, "How about a hamburger?"
With a picture of Lindsay's mother on the screen, Lindsay can look at it, and the computer will say, "Mom, could you come here?"