Posted on 07/16/2021 10:43:27 AM PDT by Red Badger
(UC San Francisco) ===========================================================================
In a world first, US researchers have developed a neuroprosthetic device that successfully translated the brain waves of a paralyzed man into complete sentences, according to a scientific paper published Thursday.
"This is an important technological milestone for a person who cannot communicate naturally," said David Moses, a postdoctoral engineer at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), and one of the lead authors of the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"It demonstrates the potential for this approach to give a voice to people with severe paralysis and speech loss."
The breakthrough involved a 36-year-old man who had a stroke when he was 20 that left him with anarthria - the inability to speak intelligibly, though his cognitive function had remained intact.
Every year, thousands of people lose the ability to talk due to strokes, accidents or disease.
Past research in this area has focused on reading brain waves via electrodes to develop mobility prosthetics that allow users to spell out letters.
The new approach was intended to enable more rapid and organic communication.
VIDEO AT LINK......................
UCSF researchers had previously placed electrode arrays on patients with normal speech who were undergoing brain surgery, to decode the signals that control the vocal tract in order to express vowels and consonants, and were able to analyze the patterns to predict words.
But the concept hadn't been tried out on a paralyzed patient to prove it could offer clinical benefit.
Feat of neuroengineering The team decided to launch a new study called Brain-Computer Interface Restoration of Arm and Voice, and the first participant asked to be referred to as BRAVO1.
Since suffering a devastating brainstem stroke, BRAVO1 has had extremely limited head, neck, and limb movements, and communicates by using a pointer attached to a baseball cap to poke letters on a screen.
The researchers worked with BRAVO1 to develop a 50-word vocabulary with words essential to his daily life like "water," "family," and "good," then surgically implanted a high-density electrode over his speech motor cortex.
Over the next several months, the team recorded his neural activity as he attempted to say the 50 words, and used artificial intelligence to distinguish subtle patterns in the data and tie them to words.
To test it had worked, they presented him with sentences constructed from the vocabulary set, and recorded the results on a screen.
They then prompted him with questions like "How are you today?" and "Would you like some water?" which he was able to answer with responses like, "I am very good," and "No, I am not thirsty."
The system decoded up to 18 words per minute with a median accuracy of 75 percent. An "auto-correct" function, similar to that used in phones, contributed to its success.
"To our knowledge, this is the first successful demonstration of direct decoding of full words from the brain activity of someone who is paralyzed and cannot speak," said BRAVO1's neurosurgeon Edward Chang, a co-author.
An accompanying editorial in the journal hailed the development as "a feat of neuroengineering," and suggested advancements in technology such as smaller surface electrodes might help improve accuracy even further.
This is really cool if it’s true.
How are you today?
“Not good....I’m frickin’ paralyzed!”
PFPFFT!.....................
Does anyone have any doubts about how this technology will be actually used? No more police interrogations. Just scans followed by arrests. Pretty cool. With the growing plethora of laws it is impossible to go a day in the USA without committing some sort of crime.
“Not well, Joseph Stolen still holds the White House”
This means they will be able to also use it regarding dreams.
If they can manage the reverse process as well—words received to brain waves, or better yet, concepts—you have telepathy, at least within radio range. Would be very valuable militarily.
Donning his new canine decoder, Professor Schwartzman becomes the first human being on Earth to hear what barking dogs are actually saying.
“Hey! Hey! Hey!”
Next stop: submital of dream transcripts as exhibits in divorce cases!
Only a slight functionality gain over radios.
They don’t dare attach this to Jao Xiden’s head. “Hey little girl, wanna get felt up? What are you 8? 14? no matter.”
For words/sentences, yes. If concepts/ideas could be shared, would be a game changer.
Oh this is so riupe for a Far Side toon!
Our thoughts will be monitored for our own good, because meat machines don't have rights, only responsibilities to the state.
Totalitarian thugs the world over are salivating... every day in the future Winston will have a 'scan' to prove he's thinking right thoughts...
Is it safe to assume that the patient’s name is Joe Biden?
Great news for all the paralyzed “vaccine” takers now and those who will be in the future...
Funny you should mention that. Look up V2K (Voice to Skull) technology. The USAF has had a patent on it since 1996. It was discovered in 1962 as the Frey effect or microwave hearing. It drifts off into the conspiratorial weeds with “Targeted Individuals” but the technology appears to be real with multiple applications.
https://rec.radio.shortwave.narkive.com/v7i7SnrA/v2k-microwave-hearing
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