Re:Overhyped (Score 1)

First, I totally agree with you that this isn't necessarily the fastest way to communicate. Opening my mouth and talking is much faster. Eye movements are really easy to detect and ok to track. *But*, if you are completely locked-in (not even any eye movement left), how are you going to communicate with anybody??? And even if you have eye movements left, do you really want to use them for *everything*?

Previously, in 1988 there was work on P300-based control (check out Farwell and Donchin's work). They got about 2.3 characters/min (0.2 bits/sec). Hideously slow!!!

It does looks like you need to check out the recent advances in signal processing. Currently, we do single trial recognition (after *mucho* signal processing) with about 85% accuracy today. Also, Scott Makeig's group at the Salk Institute gets around 80%.

Single trial P300 detection is hard, but not impossible.