U-M and Stanford share $30m grant to restore speech after stroke

To this end, the philanthropic Marcus Foundation has awarded a $30m grant, led by Stanford, that would benefit victims of aphasic stroke. U-M will receive $19m of the total grant.

The US National Institutes of Health estimated over one million Americans have aphasia and there are over 210,000 new cases per year. Damage to the brain impacts their ability to listen, write, read and speak, yet they retain their ability to understand others' speech. 

U-M researchers Cindy Chestek and David Blaauw will lead the design and construction of an implantable, long-term brain-computer interface. At Stanford, researchers will work with people who have had a stroke that impaired their ability to speak. They will evaluate whether they can ‘decode’ words from other parts of the brain that were not affected by the stroke. 

"The current electrode technology has been in use since the 1990s and it's called the Utah array," said Chestek, U-M professor of biomedical engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, and robotics. "It's an implantable electrode that can last from one year to seven. But that's not reliable enough for a medical treatment, and the device can also create a lot of scar tissue in the brain.