65-year-old Man with Paralysis Learns to Write Using Brain Chip That Converts Thoughts to Text

Thinking is not the same as doing. This achievement which scientists call “high-performance brain-to-text communication” was accomplished using a brain-computer interface device developed by American neuroscientists working with a research collaborative Braingate. As in this case, the participant, whose hands were paralysed because of a spinal cord injury, just thought about the hand movements and was able to write 90 characters per minute with a 94% accuracy. This is a huge achievement as the speed of 90 characters per minute is comparable to 115 characters per minute, the typical typing speed of a person, belonging to the age group of the participant, on their smartphone. Brain chips were also in the news last year when SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveiled Neuralink, a brain-to-machine interface in September 2020.