The completion of this study and the achievement of its aims should help to move EEG based BCI technology out of the laboratory and to demonstrate that it is a powerful, clinically practical, and affordable communication and control technology that can substantially improve the lives of people with ALS. Furthermore, the study should validate and establish an important new option, BCI-based communication that the VA can provide to many of its most severely disabled patients. This achievement would make the VA the first and only entity in the world that can provide this radically new and important assistive technology to its patients.