Researchers translate brain signals using microelectrodes

The move is a first step towards the development of a system that might, one day, allow severely paralysed people to speak with their thoughts.

’We have been able to decode spoken words using only signals from the brain with a device that has promise for long-term use in paralysed patients who cannot now speak,’ said Bradley Greger, an assistant professor of bioengineering at the university.

As the method involves placing electrodes on the brain and still needs improving, he expects it will be a few years before clinical trials will take place on paralysed people who are unable to speak.

In a trial, the university research team placed grids of tiny non-penetrating microelectrodes called microECoGs over speech centres in the brain of a volunteer with severe epileptic seizures. The man already had a craniotomy – temporary partial skull removal – so doctors could place larger, conventional electrodes to locate the source of his seizures and surgically stop them.