Using computers to turn thoughts into language
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Aman who was paralysed from the neck down in an accident more than a decade ago has written sentences using a computer system that turns imagined handwriting into words. It is the first time that scientists have created sentences from brain activity linked to handwriting, and this paves the way for more sophisticated devices to help paralysed people communicate faster and more clearly.
The man, known as T5, who is in his 60s and lost practically all movement below his neck after a spinal cord injury in 2007, was able to write 18 words a minute when connected to the system. On individual letters, his “mindwriting” was more than 94 per cent accurate.
Imagined actions
Frank Willett, a research scientist on the project at Stanford University in California, said the approach opened the door to decoding other imagined actions, such as ten-finger touch typing and attempted speech for patients who had permanently lost their voices. “Instead of detecting letters, the algorithm would be detecting syllables, or rather phonemes, the fundamental unit of speech,” he said. Amy Orsborn, an expert in neural engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle, who was not involved in the work, called it “a remarkable advance” in the field.
Scientists have developed numerous software packages and devices to help paralysed people communicate, ranging from speech recognition programs to the muscle-driven cursor system created for the late Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) (see box, p. 20), who used a screen on which a cursor automatically moved over the letters of the alphabet. To select one, and to build up words, he simply tensed his cheek.
Hawking’s system was a big improvement on the painstaking process used by Jean-dominique Bauby (1952–1997), the late editor-in-chief of French Elle, to write his 1997 memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (see p. 21). Bauby had had a massive stroke in 1995 that left him “locked in”, able to blink only his left eyelid. He dictated the entire book by having the freelance editor Claude Mendibil read the alphabet aloud and blinking when she reached the next letter he wanted. For all the progress made since then, researchers have long dreamed of more efficient systems that tapped directly into the brain.