On the verge of cyberpunk: scientists turned brain signals into text

Scientists from BrainGate were able to train a paralyzed 65-year-old man to write with the power of thought.

For this, the patient was implanted into the brain with two 4 x 4 mm implants. Each of them contains 100 electrodes, which are immersed in a section of the cerebral cortex, which controls hand movements in healthy people.

The implants were connected to a computer, and then the man imagined that he was writing text by hand – and the program was trained to recognize his brain impulses. As a result, we managed to reach a typing speed of 90 characters (about 16 words) per minute. And this is not so little as it seems: only a quarter of people over 65 are typing faster.