Scientists Discover A Neuroprosthetic Device To Convert Brain Waves Of A Paralyzed Man Into Speech

For the first time, a team of scientists from the United States has come up with a neuroprosthetic device that has been able to effectively convert the brain waves of a paralyzed person into speech. One of the lead authors of the study, David Moses, who is also a postdoctoral engineer from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has said that the device can be considered a technological milestone for a person who is unable to speak naturally. The findings of the study have shown that the device has the potential to help people speak and communicate properly who have been dealing with severe paralysis and speech loss. In this breakthrough study, experts have enrolled a 36-year-old man who has suffered a stroke at the age of 20 that has led to anarthria. Due to anarthria, he has been left with speech impairment though his cognitive function has been intact. Health experts have said that each year, many people lose their ability to speak after dealing with a stroke, accident, or disease. In the past, experts have done many studies where they have focused on interpreting brain waves with the help of electrodes to grow mobility prosthetics that help patients to spell out letters. However, in the new study experts have focused on assisting more rapid and natural communication. The outcomes of the research have been released in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Earlier, experts from the UCSF have positioned electrode arrays on patients with normal speech who have been undergoing brain surgery. They have used electrode arrays on patients in order to decode the signals that regulate the vocal tract to articulate vowels and consonants. With this, experts have been able to observe the patterns to guess words. However, this concept has not been tried on patients who are paralyzed to confirm that it can offer some clinical benefits as well. This time, experts have launched a new study that has been titled as Brain-Computer Interface Restoration of Arm and Voice. They have referred to their first participant as BRAVO1. As BRAVO has suffered a devastating brainstem stroke in the past, he has an extremely limited head, neck, and limb movement. He has been using a pointer joined to a baseball cap to indicate letters on a screen to communicate. In the study, experts have tried to come up with a 50-word vocabulary that has words, which are important for his daily life communication such as water, family, good. The authors of the study have surgically inserted a high-density electrode on his speech motor cortex during the study. Over the next few months, experts have analyzed the neural activity of the patient as he tried to speak those 50 words. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), experts have tried to differentiate vague patterns in the data and link them to words.

The authors of the study have said that they have asked few questions to the patient that have been constructed with the vocabulary set and have verified the results on the screen. They have presented him with questions such as how are you, would you like some water, to which he has been able to respond perfectly such as I am very good or no, I am not thirsty. Scientists have said that their system has been able to decipher 18 words per minute with an average of 75 percent precision. They have informed that an auto-correct function as well as contributed to the success of the study. The co-author of the study, Edward Chang, has claimed that to date, it is the first successful revelation of direct decoding of full words from the brain activity of a person who is dealing with speech impairment or paralysis.