Brain implants are pretty cool

The secrets of mind reading could soon become available to the world – no more gatekeeping from psychics and Professor X.

Brain-reading implants combined with AI algorithms have enabled two people with paralysis to communicate with unprecedented accuracy and speed, according to a pair of separate peer-reviewed studies published simultaneously last week in Nature.

In the studies, two teams – one led by researchers from Stanford University and the other led by scientists from UC San Francisco – used brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that measure patients’ brain signals when they attempt to speak, then used AI to translate those signals into text or words spoken by a synthetic voice.

• The two BCIs were able to decode speech at 62 words/minute and 78 words/minute – slower than normal conversation (~160 words/minute), but faster than any previous attempts at brainwave translation.
• And while earlier versions of BCI technology could only interpret a few hundred words, the Stanford team’s algorithm can decipher up to 125,000 words, the equivalent of a small dictionary.

👀 Looking ahead… It’ll take at least a few more years before doctors will be able to prescribe such treatments for patients. The studies’ authors say a handful of improvements are still needed before their BCIs can be approved for wider use.