Brain implants turn imagined handwriting into text on a screen / Humans + Tech - #80

If you've never heard colours, you can now do so. Researchers planted tiny electrodes on the surface of the brain of a man paralysed from the neck down. As he imagined writing letters with his hand, the researchers analysed the neural patterns for each letter. They created an algorithm that transformed these neural patterns into words on a screen [Anushree Dave, ScienceNews]. From his brain activity alone, the participant produced 90 characters, or 15 words, per minute, Krishna Shenoy, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Stanford University, and colleagues report May 12 in Nature.