Novel Brain Implants Help Paralyzed People Speak Faster, More Accurately
High-performance brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) decoded brain activity into speech faster, more accurately, and with a bigger vocabulary than existing technologies, two early trials in Nature showed. In the BrainGate2 study, speech-to-text BCI that recorded activity from intracortical microelectrode arrays (MEAs) decoded the speech of a woman with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at 62 words per […]
Outgoing AMA President Calls for Unity in the Relay That Is Medicine
Jack Resneck Jr., MD, conveyed a message of hope, progress, and unity in his final speech as American Medical Association (AMA) president, but without ignoring “very real” threats to the profession. During the AMA House of Delegates (HOD) meeting Friday, he quipped “You got to hear from ‘angry Jack’ back in November,” referring to his […]
Can ADHD Cause Speech Problems?
What is ADHD? ADHD is short for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. ADHD can cause speech problems — including word pronunciation. ADHD is a mental health issue common in children. It can cause speech problems — including word pronunciation. Lack of fluency while speaking can cause pauses and repetition, making children sound as if they are stammering. ADHD […]
Phone Calls Spot Early Alzheimer’s
Speech patterns in phone conversations can spot people with early to moderate Alzheimer’s dementia, a Japanese study suggested. A machine-learning predictive model correctly identified people with Alzheimer’s dementia with about 90% accuracy using audio files of phone conversations of 24 people with confirmed Alzheimer’s and 99 healthy controls, reported Akihiro Shimoda, MPH, of McCann Health […]
‘Neuroprosthesis’ restores words to man with paralysis: Technology could lead to more natural communication for people who have suffered speech loss
Researchers at UC San Francisco have successfully developed a “speech neuroprosthesis” that has enabled a man with severe paralysis to communicate in sentences, translating signals from his brain to the vocal tract directly into words that appear as text on a screen. The achievement, which was developed in collaboration with the first participant of a […]