News Neuroscience

New brain implants ‘read’ words directly from people’s thoughts

Devices could permit communication from people with paralysis and others unable to speak

An illustration of a woman with the top of her appearing to open on a hinge and her pull a thin white string out of a tangled collection of string where her brain would be

To restore someone’s lost ability to communicate, scientists used experimental brain implants to turn internal speech into external signals.

Malte Mueller/fstop/Getty Images Plus

By Laura Sanders

SAN DIEGO — Scientists have devised ways to “read” words directly from brains. Brain implants can translate internal speech into external signals, permitting communication from people with paralysis or other diseases that steal their ability to talk or type.

New results from two studies, presented November 13 at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, “provide additional evidence of the extraordinary potential” that brain implants have for restoring lost communication, says neuroscientist and neurocritical care physician Leigh Hochberg.