TECHNOLOGY : Neuroscientist Sees Medical Potential in Military Technology

Some time ago, David Warner decided not to use his knowledge of technology for the benefit of the military industry.

He chose instead to study neuroscience and to devote his career to finding ways to use technology in medicine to improve human lives. Speaking at the National Computer Graphics Assn. convention in Anaheim last week, Warner said he thinks the burgeoning field of virtual reality is especially promising.

One example would be “smart” beds and “smart” wheelchairs that would know how to prevent bed sores by sensing pressure from patients’ body weight and shifting them periodically, said Warner, a neuroscientist at Loma Linda University Medical Center in San Bernardino County.

Virtual reality refers to the realistic, three-dimensional artificial worlds that can be created by using computer graphics, electronic goggles and “data gloves” with built-in sensors capable of detecting where in this artificial world a person is pointing.

The field had its origins in three-dimensional flight simulators for the military, but it has spread to the entertainment industry as high-speed computers and graphics equipment become cheaper. Advocates of the technology last week were promoting its uses in creating special effects for movies and other uses.

But Warner found an application for virtual reality with much more immediate benefit.

An 18-month-old girl, Crystal, was paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident. When Warner heard about the girl, a patient at the Loma Linda hospital, he thought that perhaps computers could help make her life a little easier.

Warner went to Biocontrol Systems, a Palo Alto company that had developed a device resembling a football helmet face guard. When strapped to a person’s head, the device can electronically capture the movements of the person’s eye muscles.

Warner strapped the device onto Crystal’s head and, with the use of a computer software program he developed, was able to coordinate the movements of her eye muscles with the movements of an object on a personal computer screen.

“She was able to move the cursor of a computer with her eyes, completely hands off,” Warner said.

In other applications, Warner has used data gloves--devices resembling the Power Glove from video game maker Nintendo Co. that are used to point to objects on a computer screen--to judge the severity of the tremors suffered by patients with Parkinson’s disease.