Stanford scientists have created a brain implant that lets a man with paralyzed hands “type” around 90 words every minute, just by thinking of the words. The findings were published in the journal Nature. Older implant systems often depend on patients moving a cursor to specific characters on a digital keyboard with their minds.
However, the new Stanford neural implant enables a patient to type by imagining themselves writing a word without using their hand. An AI then decodes the neural signals and displays the word on a screen. The team combined the neural implant system with an autocorrect feature that offered a 99 percent accuracy rate, as per the SCMP, which would be impressive even on a normal keyboard. They now claim the patient is now the world’s fastest mind typist.
More resources required for research
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Krishna Shenoy Stanford neuroscientist, according to SCMP. “When we really understand the brain through neuroscience in the coming decades we should be able to do much better in a wider variety of tasks.”
Interestingly, Shenoy said the main challenge facing neural implant researchers now is commercialization, aligning with companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink in attempting to push brain implants out of medicine and into the consumer electronics segment. To ensure the safety of the users, Shenoy hopes that private firms will pump in more resources into its research and development.
Assuring safety is paramount
“[It is] maybe the trickiest of all [challenges],” Shenoy said, according to SCMP. “That’s where it takes very special people to really focus on these problems and invest their money and that’s where, for example, Elon Musk and Neuralink are really making a huge impact because they are making it possible for many companies to receive funding [by showing] how important this area is.”
Recently, Spanish scientists implanted a blind patient enabling the patient to see directly by stimulating her brain’s visual cortex. The system uses an “artificial retina” that is equipped with a pair of glasses and detects light in front of its users.
