Imagine you’re paralyzed and can’t move or speak. How would you communicate with the world? This video describes the principles of early brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) designed to read electrical brain signals, analyze how brain activity patterns contribute to vocal tract movements, and reproduce the sound patterns as speech. The model is a first step toward one day restoring paralyzed individuals’ natural rate of communication and quality of life. For more information see https://ja.ma/37dfVSx and https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1119-1.

Author:
Edward Chang, M.D.
Professor and Vice Chair of Neurological Surgery
Jeanne Robertson Distinguished Professor
William K. Bowes Jr Biomedical Investigator
Co-Director, Center for Neural Engineering and Prostheses at UC Berkeley and UCSF
Weill Institute of Neurosciences
University of California, San Francisco