A bilingual man who had lost his speech was able to speak English and Spanish thanks to a new brain implant.
- A new brain implant has allowed a bilingual man who lost his speech following a stroke to once again hold conversations in English and Spanish.
- The object contains an array of 128 electrodes and was attached to the surface of the left hemisphere of the patient’s brain.
- The progress of this feat is described in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.
A new brain implant has allowed a paralyzed man to speak again… in two distinct languages!
The patient in question is bilingual, fluent in both English and Spanish. He became quadriplegic following a stroke that affected part of his brain stem. His cognitive functions were not affected by the tragedy, but he retained only a small part of the control of his vocal tract, enough to produce grunts and moans but not words.
Before the implant, humans communicated using an interface that allowed them to spell words by making small head movements.
Speech recovery: how does the new brain implant work?
The implant was successfully placed more than three years ago. The object contains an array of 128 electrodes and was attached to the surface of the left hemisphere of the patient’s brain, over regions known to be important in speech production. A device embedded in the skull connects the device to a computer system.
Once implemented, the software also had to be “shape” Or “developed”. The researchers and the patient thus began to have him integrate 51 English words, 50 Spanish words and three identical words in the two languages. They then gradually enriched the vocabulary.
During the training, the patient saw words one by one on a screen and then had to try to pronounce them so that the system learned to correctly translate their brain activity.
After all these operations, the question was whether the patient could actually use the new system to have a real conversation. This was indeed possible, as the patient was also able to switch from one language to another without any problem.
Speech recovery: what future for the new brain implant?
The implant designers are very optimistic about their new technology. “It has the potential to restore more natural communication for the many bilinguals suffering from paralysis,” they estimate
“Overall, our results indicate the presence of shared cortical articulatory representations that persist after paralysis and enable decoding of multiple languages without the need to train language-specific systems,” they finish.
Their results are published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.