AAC Translation Lab Tour

Kelcey Buck Author

05/15/2020 Added

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Kevin Pitt provides a virtual tour of his research lab, the Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) Translation Lab, at the Barkley Memorial Center.

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[00:00:03.260]Hi my name is Kevin Pitt and this
[00:00:04.600]is the augmentative and alternative
[00:00:05.990]communication translation laboratory.
[00:00:08.340]For those of you who haven't heard
[00:00:09.400]about AAC before or augmentative
[00:00:11.572]communication, it's the area of field that
[00:00:14.480]seeks to provide support or replacement
[00:00:17.270]communication method. For those individuals
[00:00:19.670]who find traditional methods of communication
[00:00:22.300]such as speech or writing either ineffective
[00:00:26.090]or just inefficient. In our lab
[00:00:29.100]we're primarily interested in providing AAC
[00:00:31.720]methods for those individuals with severe
[00:00:33.680]physical impairments. So we're thinking about
[00:00:36.140]potentially children or adults who have
[00:00:38.350]cerebral palsy, or potentially adults who have
[00:00:41.080]conditions like Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis or
[00:00:43.840]ALS and some of you may have heard about the late
[00:00:46.640]Stephen Hawking and those kind of conditions.
[00:00:49.340]And we're thinking about those people that
[00:00:50.830]have really severely impaired voluntary movements
[00:00:55.350]In the lab we're really interested in how
[00:00:57.470]we support communication for these individuals
[00:01:00.420]both today but also looking toward the future as
[00:01:03.010]well. So for instance right now, individuals who
[00:01:06.210]have severe physical impairments may access AAC
[00:01:08.950]devices such as this one right here through eye
[00:01:11.900]gaze technology. And eye gaze technology works
[00:01:14.980]by a little infrared sensor down here at the
[00:01:17.830]bottom, detecting the location of the pupils.
[00:01:21.480]So therefor an individual can select an item in
[00:01:24.740]the communication display by orienting their
[00:01:27.900]eyes towards a given item for a shortly extended
[00:01:32.600]period of time. Or blinking, for instance.
[00:01:35.720]Regarding future types of AAC access technologies
[00:01:39.370]my lab is primarily concerned about the
[00:01:41.420]application of brain computer interface
[00:01:43.560]technology for AAC or BCI. So brain computer
[00:01:47.280]interfaces seek to directly translate an
[00:01:50.420]individuals brain activity and provide
[00:01:54.220]communication control. So for instance
[00:01:57.140]now instead of having to say physically move
[00:01:59.450]your hand to guide a mouse cursor across the
[00:02:01.810]screen, you can now simply imagine moving your
[00:02:05.070]hand and that would still have the same effect
[00:02:08.120]so to control these devices in our lab the
[00:02:10.120]individual wears an electroencephalography cap
[00:02:13.230]or an EEG cap such as this. That has that our cap
[00:02:16.430]has 32 electrodes in it and each one of these
[00:02:18.710]electrodes records brain activity at the level
[00:02:21.070]of the scalp. Then using a computer we show them
[00:02:24.700]different things we have them perform different
[00:02:27.380]tasks and we look at the neurological brain
[00:02:30.050]activity associated with those tasks and then
[00:02:32.730]look at how that can be translated to provide
[00:02:35.010]communication access even for those who have no
[00:02:38.220]form of motor movement so individuals who have
[00:02:40.870]total locked in syndrome or disorders of
[00:02:43.440]consciousness and those people in a total
[00:02:45.320]locked in state. So very broadly my lab is
[00:02:48.340]really interested in how we develop and implement
[00:02:51.110]these type of AAC devices for a range of
[00:02:53.500]populations both children and adult. It's
[00:02:56.490]also really important in this translation that we
[00:02:58.960]also consider how we train individuals to use
[00:03:01.410]these devices so that can include both the
[00:03:04.430]user of the device but also we've got to think
[00:03:07.220]about caregivers how we train speech-language
[00:03:09.044]pathologists and inter-professional multi-
[00:03:12.310]disciplinary collaborations as well to make sure
[00:03:15.080]these devices can be implemented effectively to
[00:03:17.800]provide functional communication to these
[00:03:19.710]individuals who may have no other form of communication

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AAC Translation Lab Tour

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