Neural interface translates thoughts into type

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A neural interface has been developed that could enable people with paralysis to type faster than they could using other technologies, by directly translating attempts at handwriting into text.

By

  1. Pavithra Rajeswaran

    1. Pavithra Rajeswaran is in the Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.

  2. Amy L. Orsborn

    1. Amy L. Orsborn is in the Department of Bioengineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA; and in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and at the Washington National Primate Research Center, University of Washington.

We can think much faster than we can communicate — a fact that many of us feel aware of as we struggle with our smartphone keyboards. For people with severe paralysis, this information bottleneck is much more extreme. Willett et al.1 report in a paper in Nature the development of a brain–computer interface (BCI) for typing that could eventually let people with paralysis communicate at the speed of their thoughts.

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Nature 593, 197-198 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00776-8

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