Severely paralyzed man communicates using brain signals sent to his vocal tract
The USCF system, however, uses an implant that's placed directly on the part of the brain dedicated to speech. That way, the subject can mentally activate the brain patterns they would normally use to say a word, and the system can translate the entire word, rather than single letters, to the screen.
To make it work, patients with normal speech volunteered to have their brain recordings analyzed for speech related activities. Researchers were then able to analyze those patterns and develop new methods to decode them in real time, using statistical language models to improve accuracy.
However, the team still wasn't sure if brain signals controlling the vocal tract would still be intact in patients paralyzed for many years. To that end, they enlisted an anonymous participant (known as Bravo1) who worked with researchers to create a 50-word vocabulary that the team could decipher using advanced computer algorithms. That included words like "water," "family" and "good," enough to allow the patient to create hundreds of sentences applicable to their daily life. The team also used an "auto-correct" function similar to those found on consumer speech recognition apps.
The system was able to decode their speech at up to 18 words per minute with 93 percent accuracy, with a 75 percent median accuracy. That might not sound great compared to the 200 words per minute possible with normal speech, but it's much better than the speeds seen on previous neuroprosthetic systems.
The team said the trial represents a proof of principal for this new type of "speech neuroprosthesis." Next up, they plan to expand the trial to include more participants, while also working to increase the number of words in the vocabulary and improve the rate of speech.
See the full story here: https://www.engadget.com/severely-paralyzed-man-communicates-using-brain-signals-sent-to-his-vocal-tract-110524126.html
