Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, and this means that people can use hi-tech advanced options to help others. Check out the latest brain implant-related tech and what it can do below.
Hi-tech brain implant results
A team of neuroscientists, neurosurgeons, and engineers at Duke University in North Carolina has developed a groundbreaking new technology that can translate brain signals into speech.
This device, called a speech prosthetic, is much faster than any other speech-decoding technology currently available.
It is a promising development for patients who have lost their ability to speak.
“This technology would help patients suffering from debilitating neurological disorders such as ALS [amyotrophic lateral sclerosis] and locked-in-syndrome, who have lost the ability to speak and communicate,” Gregory Cogan told Newsweek.
He is a professor of neurology at Duke University and one of the lead researchers on this project. “The current tools available to allow them to communicate are generally very slow and cumbersome.”
Cogan collaborated with Jonathan Viventi, a Duke researcher who heads a biomedical engineering lab. The focus of Viventi’s lab is to create ultra-thin, high-density, and flexible brain sensors. Together, Cogan and Viventi’s team were able to fit 256 microscopic brain sensors onto a piece of flexible medical-grade plastic that was only as big as a postage stamp.
“Neural speech prostheses work by directly reading the brain signals that control speech motor movement, and then translate these signals directly into readable outputs that can be used to create speech sounds,” Cogan said. They read your intentions to speak and translate this intention to sound.
The team is working on a project to fit devices, through a small craniotomy in the skull, onto the motor cortex of the brain.
They have also been working on making one of these devices work wirelessly. This would enable patients to move around freely while using it.
The experiment involved four patients who were already undergoing brain surgery for other conditions.
The team temporarily placed the device in the patients’ brains and asked them to repeat a series of simple words out loud to test the implant’s effectiveness.
