"We didn't know if the speech commands in the brain would still work after 15 years," he says. Tests showed that the system worked in people who were still able to move and speak.īut success was far from certain in someone such as BRAVO1, Chang says. Previously, Chang's team had developed a system designed to recognize the brain signals associated with the intention to speak specific words.
Dormant brain signals tapped for communication But the areas of the brain that once issued speech commands are intact. "The stroke left him nearly completely paralyzed in his arms and legs but also in the muscles of his vocal tract," Chang says. The name refers to his status as the first patient in a study called BRAVO, or Brain-Computer Interface Restoration of Arm and Voice.īRAVO1, who is in his late 30s, has been paralyzed and unable to speak since he had a stroke 15 years ago, Chang says. "I think there's a huge runway to make this better over time."Ī device that allowed people who can't speak to communicate using brain circuits previously used for speech would be "more natural, and hopefully effortless compared to current assistive devices," says Chethan Pandarinath, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech.Ĭhang's team wanted to find a better solution for the man, identified only as BRAVO1 to protect his privacy. "This tells us that it's possible," says Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco. The man is currently limited to a vocabulary of just 50 words and communicates at a rate of about 15 words per minute, which is much slower than natural speech. The ability comes from an experimental implanted device that decodes signals in the man's brain that once controlled his vocal tract, as researchers reported Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. UCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang says a system that lets a man express his thoughts at 15 words a minute is just the beginning for computer-mediated communication.Ī man who is unable to move or speak can now generate words and sentences on a computer using only his thoughts.
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