Eliza Strickland reports in a 21 Feb 2017 article in the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Spectrum Magazine on
progress made by Stanford's new Brain Interfacing Laboratory
in experimental brain implants for people suffering paralysis.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Eliza Strickland, IEEE Spectrum
Another participant, a 64-year-old man paralyzed by a spinal cord injury, set a new record for speed in a “copy typing” task. Copying sentences like “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,” he typed at a relatively blistering rate of 8 words per minute.
That’s four times as fast as the previous world’s best, says Stanford neurosurgeon Jaimie Henderson, a senior member of the research team. Further improvements to the user interface—including the kind of autocomplete software that’s standard on smartphones—should boost performance dramatically.
This experimental gear is far from being ready for clinical use: To send data from their implanted brain chips, the participants wear head-mounted components with wires that connect to the computer. But Henderson’s team, part of the multi-university BrainGate consortium, is contributing to the development of devices that can be used by people in their everyday lives, not just in the lab. “All our research is based on helping people with disabilities,” Henderson tells IEEE Spectrum.
Although getting brain surgery and having an implant installed is a drastic move, Henderson’s team recently surveyed people with paralysis regarding their willingness to use a variety of different BCI technologies. About 30 percent of respondents with injuries high on their spinal cords said they’d get a brain implant if it could be made wireless, and if it allowed them to type just 2 words per minute.
Here’s how the system works: The tiny implant, about the size of a baby aspirin, is inserted into the motor cortex, the part of the brain responsible for voluntary movement. The implant’s array of electrodes record electrical signals from neurons that “fire” as the person thinks of making a motion like moving their right hand—even if they’re paralyzed and can’t actually move it. The BrainGate decoding software interprets the signal and converts it into a command for the computer cursor.
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Article and video here -
http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-o...rds-per-minute
New Record: Paralyzed Man Uses Brain Implant to Type Eight Words Per Minute
