No Evidence for Communication in the Complete Locked-in State

Abstract

Enabling communication for patients in the complete locked-in state (CLIS) has been a major goal for Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) research over the past 20 years. Last year, two papers were published that claim to have reached this goal: (Chaudhary et al., 2017) were the first to report communication in CLIS using a method based on fNRIS. Few month later, (Guger et al., 2017) claimed that their EEG-based BCI system is able to restore communication in CLIS. This manuscript demonstrates methodological flaws in the analysis of both papers and that their conclusions are invalid. Further, the data from (Chaudhary et al., 2017) is reanalyzed to demonstrate that their results cannot be reproduced and that there is currently no scientifically sound evidence that demonstrates communication in CLIS.