Facebook continues to invest in innovation beyond its social media and instant messaging platforms. But in addition to wearables and a ‘metaverse’, Mark Zuckerberg’s group promotes health technology research, such as the one that led the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) to develop a brain implant to help people with difficulties or inability to speak to communicate.
The results of these efforts, under the name Project Steno and which began in mid-2019, have already demonstrated the potential of this technology by allowing a man with paralysis to ‘speak’ again through the system that connects the brain to a computer.
“This is the first time that when someone tries to say words in a natural way, they can be decoded solely from brain activity,” said Dr. David Moses, lead author of the work published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“We hope this is the proof of principle for direct control of speech from a communication device, using the intentional speech attempt as a control signal for someone who cannot speak, who is paralyzed,” he added.
How does it work?
The study, led by UCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang, involved implantation of a “neuroprosthesis” of electrodes in a person who was paralyzed after suffering a stroke at age 20.
With a patch of electrodes implanted over the area of the brain associated with monitoring the vocal tract, the man attempted to answer questions displayed on a screen. UCSF’s machine learning algorithms were able to recognize about 50 words and convert them into sentences in real time.
Moses added that the team hopes to continue Project Steno beyond Facebook’s funding phase and that the investigation still has much more work ahead of it.