The device decoded about 29 characters in a minute. (Representative)
Paris:
A paralyzed person who cannot speak or type was able to pronounce more than 1,000 words using a neuroprosthetic device that turns his brain waves into entire sentences, US researchers said Tuesday.
“Anything is possible,” was one of the man’s favorite phrases to spell, said Sean Metzger of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), first author of a new study on the research.
Last year, a team of UCSF researchers showed that a brain implant called a brain-computer interface could translate 50 very common words when a man tried to say them in full.
In the new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, they were able to silently decode 26 letters of the phonetic alphabet by copying it.
“So if he was trying to say ‘cat,’ he would say charlie-alpha-tango,” Metzger told AFP.
A spelling interface used language-modeling to crunch the data in real time, working out possible words or errors.
The study said the researchers were able to decode more than 1,150 words, which represent “more than 85 percent of the content in natural English sentences.”
He simulated that this vocabulary could be expanded to more than 9,000 words, “which is basically the number of words most people use in a year,” Metzger said.
The device decoded about 29 characters a minute, with an error rate of six percent. It turned out to be about seven words a minute.
The man, referred to as Bravo1, as the first participant in the Brain-Computer Interface Restoration of Arm and Voice trial.
Now in his late 30s, when he was 20, he suffered a stroke that left him with anarthria – the inability to speak sensibly, although his cognitive function remained intact.
He usually communicates by using a pointer attached to a baseball cap to poke letters on a screen.
In 2019, researchers surgically implanted a high-density electrode on the surface of their brain, above the speech motor cortex.
Through a port in his skull, they are then able to monitor various electrical patterns as he tries to say different words or letters.
‘Unique Advantage’
Metzger said the BRAVO1 “really enjoyed using this device because it’s able to communicate with us quickly and easily”.
One of the best parts of the study was when Bravo 1 was asked to write “whatever it wanted,” Metzger said.
“I’ve got a good idea of him,” Metzger said.
Among BRAVO1’s surprising comments was that “he didn’t really like the food where he lives,” Metzger said.
A brain-computer interface developed at Stanford University last year was able to decode 18 words a minute when a participant imagined handwriting.
But Metzger said his speech-based approach has “unique benefits.”
He noted that 50 commonly used words – which the participant utters completely silently – could be used for multiple interactions, while rare words could be written offering “the best of both worlds”. .
Research, which still needs to be confirmed in other participants, is still far from being available for the thousands of people who lose the ability to talk each year because of stroke, accidents or illness.
Patrick DeGenere, a neuroprosthetics professor at the University of Newcastle, UK, who was not involved in the research, praised the “very impressive results”.
Because neuroprosthetic surgery is “highly invasive and has risks”, such a device will only be used by a small number of people in the near future, he told AFP.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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