Science fiction is becoming reality thanks to a pioneering mind machine which helps paralysed people communicate.

Doctor Philip Kennedy, who was born in Shoreham but now lives in Atlanta, USA, is leading a team of scientists at his company, Neural Signals, who have devised two pieces of equipment which create freedom of movement and communication.

Like something from a science fiction novel, the Brain Communicator device allows a 'locked-in' person - someone who is alert and intelligent but unable to move or speak - to control a computer directly with their thoughts without using a keyboard or voice recognition technology.

It involves planting an electrode, which acts as a transmitter, into the patient's brain and allows them to control their computer mouse to picture icons, type text or surf the internet.

The second invention, known as the Muscle Communicator, is a small portable device which uses any remaining muscle movement, even if it cannot be seen, to control a computer mouse.

Both inventions will help a wide array of disabled people such as motor neurone disease sufferers like Professor Stephen Hawking or those who have been left paralysed by strokes or broken necks.

And trials of both inventions have already proved successful.

Dr Kennedy, 55, went to medical school in Ireland before going to Canada to do research and then moved to Atlanta in 1983.

He got his first laboratory in 1986 and launched Neural Signals in 1987 but had to leave his first laboratory after two years because no one would fund it.

Dr Kennedy said: "Everybody was extremely sceptical initially. It was so bad I could not get funding."

However, the company has now been hailed for its work by the science world and won awards including the 2000 World Technology Network Award; Discover Magazine's Assistive Technology Award in 1999 and the 1999 Atlanta Magazine Health Care Heroes Award.

Dr Kennedy said: "I have got a tremendous amount of publicity. There is so much work to be done. Everything takes long to do. We need more people and funding to get the brain communicator out there and show people how to use it."