ALSO| 1 Hotel opens in downtown Austin bringing luxury, sustainability and 300 jobs to Waterline<\/a><\/p>\nMeet the Device<\/p>\n
\u201cThis woman is the first person to receive Paradromics\u2019 Connexus device as part of a long-term clinical trial,\u201d says Angle, CEO of Austin-based Paradromics, one of several companies moving brain-computer interface technology from the lab into reality.<\/p>\n
I first met Angle last year, when he showed me the device as the company prepared for human trials.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the device that\u2019s implanted on the surface of the brain,\u201d Angle explained. \u201cAnd here on the edge of the device, you have 421 platinum-iridium micro-wires.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those 421 micro-wires are designed to record signals from individual neurons.<\/p>\n
The Surgery<\/p>\n
In June, neurosurgeon Dr. Matthew Willsey and his team at the University of Michigan implanted the technology in a human patient for the first time as a long-term implant. The surgery took about four hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a sense of feeling that if things go well, this could substantially move the field forward,\u201d Willsey said.<\/p>\n
First, the team had to pinpoint exactly where to place the array.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe make a kind of an inverted U-shaped incision,\u201d Willsey said. \u201cWe bring the scalp down, then we make a craniotomy \u2014 a hole in the bone, a window.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through that window, Willsey guided the Connexus implant to the section of the brain involved in producing speech.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to place the array in the area of the precentral gyrus \u2014 loosely speaking, the motor cortex \u2014 but the part of the motor cortex that controls the muscles that pronounce the sounds of speech,\u201d Willsey said.<\/p>\n
From the Operating Room to Her Living Room<\/p>\n
A lead from the brain implant runs beneath the participant\u2019s skin to a power-and-data unit in her chest. That implanted unit communicates wirelessly through intact skin with an external receiver and computing system.<\/p>\n
Weeks after surgery, testing moved to her home.<\/p>\n
When she tries to form a word, the implant captures neural patterns across hundreds of recording channels. Software decodes those signals into text and synthesized speech in real time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started working with her on just initial test sentences and started seeing, wow, these signals are distinctly different depending on what sentences or words she\u2019s attempting to speak,\u201d Angle said. \u201cThe device is working as intended. We have the signal we\u2019re looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n
In one session, the participant was asked what she would tell someone considering a brain-computer interface and the surgery. Through Connexus, she responded:<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid. It\u2019s a wonderful experience to be able to help others by your participation in the research study.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paradromics says every intended word was correctly decoded.<\/p>\n
A Milestone \u2014 With Years of Testing Ahead<\/p>\n
The company says it is now decoding the participant\u2019s attempted speech in real time \u2014 a major step toward natural, flowing conversation through a brain-computer interface.<\/p>\n
But Connexus remains an investigational device in a clinical trial. Paradromics will follow its first participant for six years, studying the device\u2019s safety, durability and real-world usefulness.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can extract information about their intentions and make that available to a computer,\u201d Angle said. \u201cAnd we can give them an assistive communication device that is more performant than anything that would be available without an implant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beyond Speech<\/p>\n
The implications could one day reach beyond restoring a voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe same kinds of devices that can read out intended speech can read out intended movement,\u201d Angle said. \u201cA lot of almost untreatable conditions that we would think of from a biology standpoint become solvable technology problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Paradromics is also studying how its high-resolution brain recordings could one day help people control computers, advanced prosthetics and AI systems more directly.<\/p>\n
For now, the immediate breakthrough is deeply human: a woman who has lost much of her ability to speak is finding a new way to be heard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a lot to say,\u201d she told the world through a computer.<\/p>\n
And we can’t wait to hear it.<\/p>\n
Paradromics is looking for more participants for the Connect-One Clinical Study. If you want to know more information, sign up or know someone who might be interested in the study here<\/a> is a link to the candidate form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 An Austin company says it has reached a major brain-computer interface milestone: its first human…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-435613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=435613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=435613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=435613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=435613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}