Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs), which are implanted into people’s brains, may one-day aid patients who have lost their capacity to communicate, according to new Caltech research. In a recent study, the researchers showed that they could use a BMI to precisely predict which words a tetraplegic participant was only thinking and not speaking or miming.
According to Sarah Wandelt, a graduate student at Caltech, “you may already have seen videos of people with tetraplegia using BMIs to control robotic arms and hands, for example, to grab a bottle and to drink from it or to eat a piece of chocolate.” In terms of language and communication, the latest findings are encouraging. A BMI was employed by researchers to reconstruct speech.
By examining brain signals collected from motor areas while a person murmured or mimed phrases, previous research was able to predict individuals’ speech to some extent; but because internal discourse does not entail movement, predicting what someone is thinking about is considerably harder.
In the past, internal speech prediction algorithms have only been able to anticipate three to four words accurately or at all in real-time. The new study has the best internal word prediction accuracy to date. In this instance, single neurons in the supramarginal gyrus, a region of the posterior parietal cortex, were used to record brain signals. This brain region reflects spoken words, according to findings from an earlier study by the researchers.
The group has now expanded their findings to include internal speech. The BMI gadget was taught by the study’s researchers to identify the brain patterns created when specific phrases were either spoken or thought by the tetraplegic subject.
About 15 minutes were spent on this training session. The individual was then instructed to speak a word aloud while the word was presented on a screen. The outcomes demonstrated that eight words could be predicted by the BMI algorithms with an accuracy of up to 91%.
The research is still in its early stages, but it may benefit people with speech-impaired disorders like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), paralysis, and brain traumas. Neurological conditions can cause total paralysis of the voluntary muscles, leaving patients unable to talk or move but still capable of thought and reasoning. An internal speech BMI would be very beneficial for that population.
The human supramarginal gyrus has already demonstrated the ability to decode imagined hand shapes for gripping, and the fact that this region can also decode speech means that one implant can restore two crucial human abilities: grasping and communication.
The BMIs only function when a person concentrates on the word, the researchers note, and they cannot be used to read people’s minds because each person’s brain would need to be taught individually.
Meanwhile, the Procurement List Information Management System (PLIMS) for the U.S. AbilityOne Commission will be updated thanks to a new investment from the Technology Modernisation Fund (TMF). Employers of people who are blind or have other serious disabilities can connect with federal agency clients using this PLIMS core software.
This connection will be strengthened because of the investment, which will also make the system more accessible and secure. The enhancements will assist federal customers who depend on AbilityOne’s goods and services as well as the Commission’s capacity to carry out programme oversight.
One of the leading employers of Americans who are blind or have other severe disabilities, AbilityOne provides the federal government with goods and services worth close to US$4 billion yearly.
The AbilityOne programme gives federal clients high-quality goods and services, and the TMF is investing US$1.78 million to upgrade the procurement software that supports buying and selling those goods and services.
