ST. LOUIS, April 7 (UPI) -- U.S. researchers say patients with a temporary surgical implant have, for the first time, used regions of the brain that control speech to "talk" to a computer.
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis say the implants allowed patients to manipulate a cursor on a computer screen simply by saying or thinking of a particular sound.
"There are many directions we could take this, including development of technology to restore communication for patients who have lost speech due to brain injury or damage to their vocal cords or airway," researcher Eric C. Leuthardt said.
Scientists have more typically programmed temporary implants, known as brain-computer interfaces, to detect activity in the brain's motor networks that control muscle movements, a university release said Thursday.
"That makes sense when you're trying to use these devices to restore lost mobility," Leuthardt said. "But that has the potential to be inefficient for restoration of a loss of communication."
Leuthardt and his colleagues used the implants on areas of the brain that control speech to analyze what the brain was doing when patients said or thought of four sounds -- oo as in few, e as in see, a as in say and a as in hat.
The brainwave patterns representing the sounds were identified and the interface programmed to recognize them, allowing patients to learn quickly to control a computer cursor by thinking or saying the appropriate sound.
"We can distinguish both spoken sounds and the patient imagining saying a sound, so that means we are truly starting to read the language of thought," Leuthardt said.
