A paralyzed man’s brain waves have been converted into a camel by an unprecedented device – SoCientífica

US scientists just developed a file Device The neural suit is able to convert brain waves into whole sentences, which is a great feat of science. The novelty was tested on a paralyzed man, as reported in a scientific article published last Thursday (15/07).

“This is an important technology milestone for someone who can’t communicate normally,” he said. David Moses, engineer at university California in San Francisco and one of the lead authors of the study at New England Journal of Medicine.

“This demonstrates the ability of this approach to give voice to people with severe paralysis and aphasia.” The device, called BRAVO1, was tested on a 36-year-old man who had a stroke at age 20 and has been unable to speak since, but his cognitive function is still intact.

Many reasons can cause people to lose the ability to communicate through words, but their brain waves are still working. For many years, scientists have been trying to find a way to develop movement aids that would allow users to spell letters.

With this new approach, which converts brain waves into whole sentences, communication becomes more efficient, faster and more organic. UCSF researchers had already implanted electrodes into patients with normal speech, during brain surgery, to decode the signals that control the vocal tract.

Even with positive results, the specialists involved did not test the concept on a patient without the ability to speak. However, these electrodes pick up brain waves and allow the formation of words and thus complete sentences.

Since a human has experienced this irreversible problem, he communicates using a pointer stuck in a baseball cap, tapping letters on the screen. Until then, researchers are working on developing 50 “essential” words for everyday use, such as “water,” “family,” “good,” and others.

First, a medical team surgically implanted the electrode into the boy and soon tests began. The participants asked questions such as “Would you like some water?” , to which he managed to answer “No, I’m not thirsty.”

“To our knowledge, this is the first successful demonstration of a direct, full-word decoding of brain activity from a person who is paralyzed and unable to speak,” said neurosurgeon Edward Chang, co-author. One editorial He lauded the project as a “feat of neuroengineering,” after all, we don’t often see brain waves translating into words.