“Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco have developed a bilingual brain implant that uses artificial intelligence to help a stroke survivor communicate in Spanish and English for the first time,” reports NBC News:
Nearly a dozen scientists from the university’s Center for Neural Engineering and Prostheses have worked for several years to design a decoding system that could turn the man’s brain activity into sentences in both languages and display them on a screen.
An article published May 20 in Nature Biomedical Engineering outlining their research identifies the man as Pancho. At age 20, he became severely paralyzed as a result of a stroke he had in the early 2000s. Pancho can moan and grunt but can’t articulate clear words. He is a native Spanish speaker who learned English as an adult.
By using an AI method known as a neural network, researchers were able to train Pancho’s implant to decode words based on the brain activity produced when he attempted to articulate them. This AI training method basically allows the brain implant, known scientifically as a brain-computer interface device, to process data in a way that is somewhat similar to the human brain.
By 2021, the technology had significantly helped restore Pancho’s ability to communicate, but only in English.
‘Speech decoding has primarily been shown for monolinguals but half the world is bilingual with each language contributing to a person’s personality and worldview…There is a need to develop decoders that let bilinguals communicate with both languages.’
However, the 2021 research served as the foundation to develop the decoding system that later made Pancho’s brain implant bilingual in Spanish and English.
Brain implants are also being used to restore cognitive abilities wiped out by traumatic brain injuries, enabling people to work again, and once again do things they couldn’t do because of their brain injury, such as reading, avoiding getting speeding tickets, and grocery shop.
In other news, skull implants could fight depression.
Scientists have developed tiny robots made of human cells to repaid damaged cells. And Arizona State University scientists “have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply,” fighting cancer.
Artificial intelligence is now developing highly-effective antibodies to fight disease. Doctors overseas are using artificial intelligence to detect cases of breast cancer more effectively.
Artificial wombs could be coming soon, to prevent premature babies from dying or being permanently disabled due to premature life outside the womb. Doctors are already beginning to do womb transplants. A woman who was previously unable to have children recently received her older sister’s womb in the first womb transplant in the United Kingdom.
