What is Locked in Syndrome (LIS)?

Locked in Syndrome (LIS) describes a condition rather than a disease or trauma. In most instances, a person with Locked in Syndrome symptoms is completely paralysed and unable to speak.

However, they usually retain their mental faculties, and can think with a high level of acuity, something which is not always appreciated by those unfamiliar with LIS, and who instead feel it necessary to not only speak loudly as if the person with LIS was deaf, but also to speak condescendingly as if they were unintelligent. Prof. Stephen Hawking once recalled, with justifiable cynicism, a person standing in front of him and asking one of his carers, "Does he have sugar in his tea?" as if the world's most famous cosmologist and theoretical physicist could neither hear nor decide. Locked in Syndrome treatment varies according to the cause, whether it is due to a trauma such as spinal cord injury (SCI) or a disease such as the motor neuron disease (MND) amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

When French fashion magazine editor and gourmet Jean Dominic Bauby suffered a massive stroke in 1995, he became completely locked in, except for his ability to blink his left eyelid. Working with his speech therapist, by having her recite the alphabet and blinking when she reached the letter he wanted written down, he authored "Le scaphandre et le papillon" translated as "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" and made into a movie in 2007. The book took M. Bauby about 200,000 blinks, at a word every two minutes. HIs experience inspired much of the early programming of NeuroSwitch.

Today, the definition of Locked in Syndrome has not changes, but NeuroSwitch offers a way to break out of some of that confinement by providing a way for a person to use their enduring mental abilities to control a computer's text, generated-speech, word processing, emailing, internet browsing, instant messaging, movies, videos, music and games, among others; to declare, "Pay attention. I am in here, and I matter."