How Neuroscience Can Give Paralyzed People The Chance to Speak Again
A young adult man with closely cropped dark brown hair sits in a wheelchair in a dimly lit room, facing a computer screen on which a simple phrase is typed out: “How are you today?” Underneath the question on the
A young adult, Pancho, who is paralyzed and unable to speak, has been given the chance to converse thanks to a groundbreaking brain implant and research collaboration with scientists at the University of California, San Francisco. Pancho, who was 20 when a brainstem stroke left him paralyzed, lost the ability to communicate verbally, relying on a slow, frustrating method of tapping keys on a computer screen to spell out words.
Scientists at the Chang lab developed a speech prosthesis that translates brain waves from the vocal motor cortex into words on a computer screen. The implant, about the size of a business card, is placed on the vocal motor cortex and records the neural activity associated with speech production. BCIs rely on the principle of persistent somatotopy, where cortical neurons that generate specific motor signals are still functioning after a stroke, allowing BCIs to interpret these signals.
An artificial neural network analyzes the neural impulses to identify phonemes, or the building blocks of words. The model can recognize nearly 90% of the English language's vocabulary, expanding the user's vocabulary significantly compared to previous models. As the user focuses on reading and repeating the words displayed on the screen, the A.I. model learns to predict their intended words even when they try to speak spontaneously.
This revolutionary technology, developed through decades of dedication in the lab and clinic, allows patients like Pancho to communicate verbally with unprecedented speed and ease.
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