High-performance brain-to-text communication via handwriting.

ABSTRACT: Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can restore communication to people who have lost the ability to move or speak. So far, a major focus of BCI research has been on restoring gross motor skills, such as reaching and grasping^1-5 or point-and-click typing with a computer cursor^6,7. However, rapid sequences of highly dexterous behaviours, such as handwriting or touch typing, might enable faster rates of communication. Here we developed an intracortical BCI that decodes attempted handwriting movements from neural activity in the motor cortex and translates it to text in real time, using a recurrent neural network decoding approach. With this BCI, our study participant, whose hand was paralysed from spinal cord injury, achieved typing speeds of 90 characters per minute with

SUBMITTER: Willett FR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8163299 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature