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A major advancement in the field of brain-computer interface (BCI), announced in May, allowed a paralyzed man to imagine writing and have the words translated to text.
Researchers used an experimental device to tap into surgically implanted electrodes, capturing activity in the region of the brain responsible for physical movement. When the quadriplegic patient envisioned writing individual characters by hand, words flew across the screen. The text was highly accurate (95 percent) and arrived faster (90 characters per minute) than any other BCI, coming in at around the same speed performed by similarly aged people typing on their smartphones.
Led by Frank Willett, a research scientist with the Braingate research consortium, the new system doubles the speed of previous thought-to-text BCI tools, which had subjects look at a screen ...
