University of California BCI study enables paralyzed woman to 'speak' through a digital avatar

Dr. Mario did not prepare us for this. In a pioneering effort, researchers from UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley, in partnership with Edinburgh-based Speech Graphics, have devised a groundbreaking communications system that allows a woman, paralyzed by stroke, to speak freely through a digital avatar she controls with a brain-computer interface. Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) are devices that monitor the analog signals produced by your gray matter and convert them into the digital signals that computers understand -- like a mixing soundboard's DAC unit but what fits inside your skull. For this study, researchers led by Dr. Edward Chang, chair of neurological surgery at UCSF, first implanted a 253-pin electrode array into speech center of the patient's brain. Those probes monitored and captured the electrical signals that would have otherwise driven the muscles in her jaw, lips and tongue, and instead, transmitted them through a cabled port in her skull to a bank of processors.