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Brain-computer-interface Startups Paradromics have today announced that surgeons have managed to insert the company’s brain implant into a patient and safely withdrawing it after about 10 minutes.
It is a step towards longer trials of the device, nicknamed Connexus. It is also the last commercial development in an increasing field of companies, especially Elon Musk Neurable—Animing to directly connect people’s brains to computers.
With the Connexusus, the Austin -based paradrome seeks to restore speech and communication in people with spinal cord lesions, stroke or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as SLA. The device is designed to translate neural signals into a word control, text and synthesized cursor. Paradrome, founded in 2015, has tested its implant in sheep for a few years. This is the first time he has used the device in a human patient.
The procedure took place on May 14 at the University of Michigan and was carried out in a person who underwent brain surgery to treat their epilepsy. The patient gave his consent so that the connection device is temporarily inserted into his time lobe, which processes hearing information and code the memory. To set up the device, the surgeons used an EPIPEN type instrument developed by the paradrome. The researchers were then able to check that the device was able to record electrical signals from the patient’s brain.
“There is a very unique opportunity when someone undergoes a major neurosurgical procedure,” explains Matt Angle, CEO of Paradromics. “They will have their skulls open, and there will be a piece of brain that will be imminently removed. Under these conditions, the marginal risk of testing a cerebral implant is in fact very low. ”
The paradome implant is smaller than the size of a penny and a 420 tiny salient needles that are pushed into the brain fabric. These needles are electrodes that record individual neurons. Likewise, the Neuralink implant is also in the brain fabric. (In comparison, it has more than 1,000 electrodes spread over 64 flexible thin threads.) Other BCI companies adopt less invasive approaches. Precision neuroscience, for example, tests an implant which rest on the surface of the brainand Synchron has developed a device that Go to a blood vessel and rests against the brain. These two devices collect signals from rather than individual neurons.
“By having the proximity of individual neurons, you can get the highest quality signal,” explains angle. It is important to obtain a high resolution of the brain signal to precisely decode the expected speech of a person.
The BCIs do not “read” the private thoughts of a person directly. Instead, they operate by interpreting the neural signals associated with movement intention. A BCI like the one that the paradrome will develop, for example, would decode the facial movements involved in the conversation. A person with paralysis that cannot move their mouths can always try to make this movement, which produces unique neural signals in the brain. These signals are then decoded in speech.
In 2023, groups from the University of Stanford and the UC San Francisco reported Major advances in the decoding of speech using Bcis. In two women with paralysis, brain implants were able to decode the speech planned at rates of 62 and 78 words per minute. For comparison, people speak about 130 words per minute.
