Bell's palsy sufferers get help to blink
For the average person, blinking doesn't take much effort.
For those with facial paralysis, an act that most people take for granted can be impossible.
A local group of student inventors' efforts to help them have caught the eye of a national innovators' group.
Three students representing the University of Pittsburgh will be in San Diego on Saturday to demonstrate their use of silicon chips and radio frequency technology to facilitate blinking of both eyes in people with Bell's palsy, a form of facial paralysis stemming from nerve damage.
The Pitt team is one of 14 invited to the ninth annual March Madness for the Mind, a presentation to be hosted by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance.
The team is made up of Steven Hackworth, a master's degree candidate in electrical engineering at Pitt; Doreen Jacob, who graduated from Pitt with a master's in the same field last year; and Abhiram Bhashyam, a junior at Bethel Park High School.
The invention, called "Blink Right," involves implanting in the lid of the good eye a tiny silicon chip that can detect nerve function or muscle movement whenever the eye blinks. Once it does, the chip transmits a radio signal to another chip in the lid of the bad eye, telling it to blink as well. The signal is transmitted via two other chips embedded in an eyeglass frame.
"People with damage to the seventh optic nerve (as with Bell's palsy) typically lose the ability to blink with one of their eyes," said Marlin Mickle, a Pitt electrical engineering professor and the team's adviser. "If you can't blink an eye, that eye is likely to go blind simply because it can't protect itself against dust and other irritants in the air."
Mickle is executive director of the John A. Swanson Center for Product Innovation at Pitt, where the Blink Right project was developed.
The device could some day serve as a prototype for others that could be used to stimulate movement in other parts of the body, said Mickle, adding, "We're a long way from doing that."
Bhashyam, 16, who joined the project last summer, said he was drawn to the research because it involves "a new concept." The aspiring neurosurgeon said he has learned a great deal about how nerves function that will help him in his future career.
The Blink Right project was funded with a grant from NCIIA, a Hadley, Mass.-based nonprofit that supports invention and entrepreneurship in higher education.
The device could be available to paralysis patients in the blink of an eye: Mickle said a West Coast company has already shown interest in bringing Blink Right to the market.
