Watch a person unable to speak for years ‘talk’ using a new brain implant

When it comes to talking, our brain does the heavy lifting. It subconsciously directs the complex coordination of lips, tongue, throat, and jaws we need to pronounce words. And it keeps directing, even in people with paralysis or who are unable to turn these commands into speech. Now, scientists have harnessed this phenomenon to create brain implants that transform this neural activity into text with unprecedented speed and accuracy. In two new studies—both reported today in Nature —the devices enabled two people to “speak” for the first time in more than a decade. The implants produced speech from brain activity with about 75% accuracy and at a speed nearly half that of natural language—results far better than with any previous technology. “It’s a game changer for the population that doesn’t have better options at this point,” says Vikash Gilja, an electrical engineer at the University of California (UC), San Diego, who was not involved in the studies. “We’re within striking range” of turning the technology into commercially viable medical devices, he adds. Most previous attempts to develop brain-computer interfaces for speech have piggybacked off electrodes implanted in the brain to monitor seizures in people with epilepsy. The resulting speech was slow and error-prone, but the technology was promising enough for researchers to begin clinical trials in people unable to speak. One group, led by neurosurgeon Edward Cha...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news