Scientists have developed a device that can translate thoughts about speech into spoken words in real time.
Although it鈥檚 still experimental, they hope the brain-computer interface can someday help give voice to those unable to speak.
Ann, a participant in a study on speech neuroprostheses, in California in 2023.聽
A new study described testing the device on a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who couldn鈥檛 speak for 18 years after a stroke. Doctors implanted it in her brain during surgery as part of a clinical trial.
It 鈥渃onverts her intent to speak into fluent sentences,鈥 said Gopala Anumanchipalli, a co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
Other brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, for speech typically have a slight delay between thoughts of sentences and computerized verbalization. Such delays can disrupt the natural flow of conversation, potentially leading to miscommunication and frustration, researchers said.
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This is "a pretty big advance in our field,鈥 said Jonathan Brumberg of the Speech and Applied Neuroscience Lab at the University of Kansas, who was not part of the study.
A team in California recorded the woman鈥檚 brain activity using electrodes while she spoke sentences silently in her brain. The scientists used a synthesizer they built using her voice before her injury to create a speech sound that she would have spoken. They trained an AI model that translates neural activity into units of sound.
A UCSF clinical research coordinator connects a neural data port into the head of Ann, a participant in a study on speech neuroprostheses, May 22, 2023, in El Cerrito, Calif.
It works similarly to existing systems used to transcribe meetings or phone calls in real time, said Anumanchipalli, of the University of California, Berkeley.
The implant itself sits on the speech center of the brain so that it鈥檚 listening in, and those signals are translated to pieces of speech that make up sentences. It鈥檚 a 鈥渟treaming approach,鈥 Anumanchipalli said, with each 80-millisecond chunk of speech 鈥 about half a syllable 鈥 sent into a recorder.
鈥淚t鈥檚 not waiting for a sentence to finish,鈥 Anumanchipalli said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 processing it on the fly.鈥
Decoding speech that quickly has the potential to keep up with the fast pace of natural speech, said Brumberg. The use of voice samples, he added, 鈥渨ould be a significant advance in the naturalness of speech."
Though the work was partially funded by the National Institutes of Health, Anumanchipalli said it wasn't affected by recent NIH research cuts. More research is needed before the technology is ready for wide use, but with 鈥渟ustained investments," it could be available to patients within a decade, he said.
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Robotic surgery is evolving. Here's what that means for patients.
Robotic surgery is evolving. Here's what that means for patients.
A medical team made history in September by performing the first fully robotic heart transplant at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Doctors spent two and a half hours controlling machines to replace the heart of a 16-year-old patient. The hospital claims the operation was less invasive than traditional heart surgeries, meaning the patient would feel less pain, be at less risk, and recover more quickly.
Surgical procedures often require a high degree of precision, which can be challenging even for experienced surgeons. The precision of machine-augmented surgery has the potential to greatly reduce the risks of medical procedures, where even small human errors can have serious consequences. More than , according to a Johns Hopkins study published in 2016. These errors include surgical mishaps, incorrect medications, and wrong diagnoses.
Robots have been used to assist in surgeries since the 1980s, with a growing number of medical practitioners around the world leveraging the technology. Recent advances in artificial intelligence are now accelerating progress in this field, potentially expanding the capabilities and applications of robotic surgical assistants. analyzed news reports and academic research to explore the evolving world of robotic surgeries.
Surgery is gradually becoming more mechanized
In 1985, doctors used the PUMA system to perform neurosurgical biopsies, taking samples of peoples' brains so doctors could study tumors鈥攁n inherently risky procedure. In 1998, the da Vinci premiered, eventually establishing itself as the most popular robotic surgery platform. That year, it was used in Leipzig, Germany, to perform heart surgery in a much less invasive way than operations done purely by hand.
The 1990s also saw the development of , which allowed doctors to operate on patients from a distance. One such design was the Medical Forward Area Surgical Team, a robotic surgery system funded by the Department of Defense. MEDFAST could be mounted into an armored vehicle and driven to the front lines to allow for a virtual telesurgical procedure.
Sophisticated advances in this technology continue, from high-definition 3D visualization to improved dexterity and motion scaling. New machines bring even more features, including tables that rotate so doctors can reposition patients during surgery; and fluorescence imaging that uses specialized dyes and lighting to help doctors identify body features such as veins and organs.
Artificial intelligence is coming
Medical technologists today are increasingly integrating AI into robotic surgery systems. These advancements involve real-time processing of data, such as providing surgeons with tactile feedback that simulates the sensation of tissue resistance. Modern AI systems also feature more state-of-the-art camera technology, capable of automatically zooming in and focusing on relevant anatomical structures. AI can also identify critical features like blood vessels and nerves, and even highlight areas where cancer cells are likely to be located.
Researchers are also actively working on developing nanobots, which will allow doctors to operate at the cellular level. These tiny robots are usually less than 1 micrometer across鈥攁bout a third of the width of a single strand of spiderweb silk鈥攁nd are designed to navigate through the bloodstream delivering drugs directly to cells. They could, for instance, deliver chemotherapy directly to sick cells without affecting healthy ones, greatly reducing the harm this medication does to people.
Technologies that were once the stuff of science fiction are coming sooner rather than later, even with their high cost and the additional training for surgeons the breakthroughs will require. In the long term, robotic surgeries are likely to actually lower costs by freeing up doctors' time. Despite the growing capacity of these machines, however, they all still require human involvement鈥攁t least for now.
Story editing by Nicole Caldwell. Additional editing by Kelly Glass. Copy editing by Tim Bruns.
originally appeared on and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
