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Brain typing

When you move, sense, speak or do just about anything, your brain generates a specific corresponding pattern of electrical activity. Brain typing under development can use these impulses to restore movement in some who have paralysis, a loss of control of the body caused by an injury to the nerves.

This advanced brain implant can let individuals with impaired limb movement create text using the mind-no hands needed. Such technology could potentially benefit millions of people worldwide who cannot type or speak because of impaired limbs or vocal muscles. But this technique let people generate just 40 characters per minute, far lower than the average keyboard typing speed or roughly 190.

Thus, some scientists have a hesitation about this new research: while restoring communication via written letters is intuitive, it may not be the most efficient efficient means of doing so. “Why not teach the person a new language based on simpler elementary gestures?” One of them asks, “This could both boost the speed of communication and, crucially, decrease the mental effort and attention needed. “

For now, Willett, a research scientist, is focusing on brain typing together with his team. He admits that analyzing what someone intends to say is still a major challenge facing researchers, given that individuals generate speech more quickly than they write or type. “It's been a hard problem to decode speech with enough accuracy and vocabulary size to allow people to have a general conversation.” Willett says. “But we' re now excited that we can decode handwriting very accurately. That is a great breakthrough.”

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