14 ms·

Neural implant lets paralyzed person type by imagining writing

540 points by Engineering-MD 5y ago

schoen 5y ago
(Should be characters rather than words.) Very impressive; I wonder if future versions will eventually even exceed the speed of speech or typing.
- Engineering-MD 5y ago
  Yes I just came to put an addendum on for characters not words. But as you said very very impressive. This could massively improve patient’s quality of life by being able to communicate much quicker
- _Microft 5y ago
  This artifical interactive knowledge entity wants access to your attention and emotional state. Think "Accept" to allow permanent access [*]. Think "More info" to instantly know our privacy policy. This is fine. [*] We will add your technological and biological distinctiveness to our own.
  - arunkant 5y ago
    Resistance Is Futile
  - SamBam 5y ago
    In the same way that irreversible actions on legacy keyboard systems are confirmed by typing in a series of words, MentalKeyboard will require you to think of a complex thought. Delete all funds from your bank account? To confirm, think of a polka-dotted elephant. Otherwise, just think of anything else.
    - gus_massa 5y ago
      I'm not sure if you did it on purpose, but when I read: > To confirm, think of a polka-dotted elephant. I immediately though: How does a polka-dotted elephant look like??? I guess my bank account is blank now :( .
      - jwuphysics 5y ago
        This would pose a different kind of problem for people with aphantasia.
    - xtorol 5y ago
      "I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood, something that could never, ever possibly destroy us: Mr. Stay-Puft."
    - dasyatidprime 5y ago
      You would want to offer a specific something else for the user's executive function to latch onto immediately, even if you continue to interpret anything other than the narrow confirmation pattern as "cancel", just so there isn't only one immediate, recent attractor for "think of something".
      - SamBam 5y ago
        thatwasthejoke
    - taneq 5y ago
      > To confirm, think of a polka-dotted elephant. You monster! :D
    - newsbinator 5y ago
      To confirm, think of a $thing continuously for 10 seconds
- matz1 5y ago
  I think so and it probably will require some skills to fully utilize it where kids in the future will start learning to use it from the early age. I image this is how I probably will become 'obsolete' in regards of technology just like my parent can't catch up with todays technology.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- amiga-workbench 5y ago
  You're reminding me of the augmented 16 fingered prosthetic hands from Ghost in The Shell, much safer than connecting your cyberbrain to a random computer system. I imagine a future version of this technology would move beyond converting mental keystrokes into input and instead work on more abstract ideas. Imagine if your IDE could auto-generate certain design patterns as you think about them, instead of forcing you to manually type them out.
Datenstrom 5y ago
It seems Vim may finally have a challenger for the title of editing text at the speed of thought at some point.
- chexx 5y ago
  Interestingly the constraint of only being able to use a simplified alphabet would let Vim "supercharge" this tech. My assumption is that translating the thought "delete the current line that the cursor is on" to the actual action is still far away. And then expanding that to something like "delete the current line that the cursor is on and all the lines above it" might be even more difficult. But the equivalent operations in normal mode are "dd" and "dgg", this interfaces very nicely with the implant.
pioughd 5y ago
It's not 90 wpm it's 90 characters per minute. Big difference. Still awesome.
- dang 5y ago
  Fixed now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135360).
tyingq 5y ago
Might be good to remove the ?comments=1 from the linked url so it doesn't scroll you past the article.
- dang 5y ago
  Done. Thanks!
pgroves 5y ago
All it needs to be able to do is page-down or scroll-down and I want it (I have RSI problems in my hands).
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  You can already get a gaze-tracking program to do this. (You can prototype one in MIT Scratch – yes, really!)
- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
  I think a foot pedal might be an easier solution than a neural implant, at least for a desktop computer
silicon2401 5y ago
I remember when I first learned to touch-type as a child, and for many years after, I would sometimes 'type' things out on my legs, tabletops, notebooks. At first it was to practice, but after I had mastered typing I kept doing it just because it was still novel to be able to type and feel like I knew how to use technology. Doing that made me realize that typing a character is a very specific and atomic action (compared to writing by hand), as well as an automatic one (once you learn how to touch-type). I wonder if the performance of this solution could be improved by training it to detect the mental impulses that occur when a trained typist imagines typing a character, rather than when the person imagines writing out a character.
- sneak 5y ago
  I still do that (tap things out in qwerty when not at a keyboard) constantly. I type well over 100wpm, and qwerty is very, very deep in my brain. On occasions I am significantly intoxicated (pretty rare for me) I can still type accurately at >50wpm even if my words are slurred. There have been times I wanted to switch layouts but qwerty is just too far in there for too many decades.
  - lazysheepherd 5y ago
    I've been practicing touch typing for over 5 years now. I seem to be capped at around ~65 WPM. I sometimes wonder if it will stay there, or will it improve. I take this to test my speed: https://10fastfingers.com/advanced-typing-test/english https://10fastfingers.com/advanced-typing-test/english Now I've tried to take the test again after roughly a year, out of curiosity, and I got around 75 several times. Maybe it will improve very slowly past this level? Do you perhaps remember how the improvement trend was with you?
    - sneak 5y ago
      I have been over 100wpm (on qwerty) since a teenager, and I'm in my late 30s now, so unfortunately no. (My scores are routinely 115-125 these days.)
yosito 5y ago
90 characters per minute is quite slow. I would expect they could get faster by having the user imagine moving a cursor over an onscreen swipe keyboard.
- tiborsaas 5y ago
  I suggest you to watch the video
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Kiro 5y ago
  They address this in both the article and the video. Their previous version was exactly that and this is twice as fast.
idiotsecant 5y ago
I wonder if this is capable of interpreting more complex characters? I wonder if a patient who previously was able to write in simplified Chinese, for example, might be able to write faster?
kbenson 5y ago
Hmm, since they are having someone imagine writing a character our and using recognition on it, I wonder if there's gains to be had to switching to a simplified writing, like Palm did for their PDAs in the past with Graffiti.[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)
- melling 5y ago
  With autocompletion and advanced prediction 90 characters a minute could be effectively much more. https://www.tabnine.com/ https://www.tabnine.com/
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    I'd love a neural interface to Dasher, which adaptively learns as you use it which letter combinations are the most popular, and adjusts over time to make it easier and faster to input common text. It would be wonderful integrated with a context and language sensitive IDE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) https://github.com/dasher-project https://github.com/dasher-project http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/ http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/ >To make the interface efficient, we use the predictions of a language model to determine how much of the world is devoted to each piece of text. Probable pieces of text are given more space, so they are quick and easy to select. Improbable pieces of text (for example, text with spelling mistakes) are given less space, so they are harder to write. The language model learns all the time: if you use a novel word once, it is easier to write next time. [...] >Imagine a library containing all possible books, ordered alphabetically on a single shelf. Books in which the first letter is "a" are at the left hand side. Books in which the first letter is "z" are at the right. In picture (i) below, the shelf is shown vertically with "left" (a) at the top and "right" (z) at the bottom. The first book in the "a" section reads "aaaaaaaaaaaa..."; somewhere to its right are books that start "all good things must come to an end..."; a tiny bit further to the right are books that start "all good things must come to an enema...". [...] >.... This is exactly how Dasher works, except for one crucial point: we alter the SIZE of the shelf space devoted to each book in proportion to the probability of the corresponding text. For example, not very many books start with an "x", so we devote less space to "x..." books, and more to the more plausible books, thus making it easier to find books that contain probable text. The classic Google Tech Talk by the late David MacKay, the inventor of Dasher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpOxbesRNBc&ab_channel=GoogleTechTalks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpOxbesRNBc&ab_channel=Googl... It's based on the concept of concept of arithmetic coding from information theory. http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/dasher/ http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/dasher/ Ada Majorek, who has ALS, uses it with a Headmouse to program (and worked on developing a new open source version of Dasher) and communicate in multiple languages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvHQ83pMLQQ&ab_channel=DasherAAC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvHQ83pMLQQ&ab_channel=Dashe...
hcurtiss 5y ago
Title should be updated to 90 characters per minute. 90 wpm would be legitimately fast.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  90 wpm and I would be wanting to get one myself!
  - buildbot 5y ago
    Yeah a 90wpm interface to a computer mentally would be incredible. Combine that with something like GPT3, use it to do natural language command line processing… If anyone is working on this I’d pay like 5k for a non invasive solution! ;)
    - swader999 5y ago
      If it helped me think at 90 wpm that'd be even better.
- etrautmann 5y ago
  90 characters per minute is still "legitimately fast" for someone who cannot type otherwise!
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    Right, but 90 wpm would be faster than most people could ever do on a conventional keyboard; it's a whole other level.
    - qwertox 5y ago
      It would be interesting to see how people compare in speed, assuming that the technology itself is not a bottleneck. We could directly measure how fast a child thinks, or a CEO vs. a homeless. Eventually we would be able to pinpoint mental problems by measuring the time it takes to think about a certain topic, check if the mind "locks up" for a couple of seconds on a seemingly unrelated topic which got triggered by the context the mind was thinking about. We could pinpoint the unrelated topic and have a base for a psychotherapy which could be more accurate than by just talking around in order to get to know the patient. Let's say a group of 10 have to think out the ordering process at a Starbucks where every step has been provided by a list. An average of 20 seconds is used to do this +- 5 seconds. If there is an outlier, one could start to dig deeper into what exactly is making the mind to wander off. Multiple tests in different scenarios could then decide if the outlier is a slow thinker in general, or if it is a certain thing which triggers this wandering off.
heavyset_go 5y ago
Having followed the development and trials of various types of brain implants, the realities and side-effects of living with brain implants can be more than most bargained for. Deep brain stimulation implants (which this isn't) in particular can be incredibly nasty even for those for whom implants are a last resort.
- iancmceachern 5y ago
  Like what? Infection?
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    Infection is one aspect. Another aspect is the battery system that powers the implant, they're usually implanted in the chest with a wire that goes up the neck to the skull. There was a case[1] where tension developed over that wire, leading to pain, immobility and destruction of the connection in brain tissue: > Steve had the surgery at Stanford, in November, 2012. After the surgery, he had “severe cognitive decline” and a slew of physiological adversities. “The leads [wires] were 18 inches longer than they needed to be, so they coiled it up in the chest and at the top of the head; I could feel them externally,” he says. “And the leads were too tight. I could move my ear and my chest would move, too,” he says of a condition called “bowstringing,” whereby scar tissue encapsulates the wires (partly from the body’s natural response to foreign material), which has been documented in DBS cases and can cause permanent complications. Steve also had many symptoms that were ultimately diagnosed as shoulder and jaw muscle atrophy, spinal accessory nerve palsy and occipital nerve palsy. He reported all adverse effects immediately and continuously throughout the first year of the study, but the trial doctors continually told him that they’d never heard of such symptoms with DBS, even though nerve damage and DBS wire-related “hardware” complications were among the potential risks listed on the informed consent document. Because they're relatively experimental, it's almost impossible to find a doctor/surgeon/etc that will choose to work on you should you run into complications. If you have problems with the programming of the devices themselves, there isn't much you can do as a patient, and even specialists can't help you. The only people who can help you are those who developed the device. That can be a problem for a device that's meant to remain implanted until death. Removal is also a huge issue, because brain tissues grow on and around the implants. There are people who want their implants removed, but can't find a doctor who is willing to remove them because of the potential for brain injury and the resulting liability. They can also cause personality changes, suicidal behavior and even homicidal behavior[4]. There are documented cases of increased impulsivity and impaired executive function, which have led to pathological gambling and shopping. Breakdowns of relationships and the ability to work are also documented[3]. Here's an article on the subject[1], and there are numerous studies that look into such effects, like this one[2] that aggregates dozens of studies. [1] https://www.madinamerica.com/2015/09/adverse-effects-perils-deep-brain-stimulation-depression/ https://www.madinamerica.com/2015/09/adverse-effects-perils-... [2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.00118/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.0011... [3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.00118/full#h9 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.0011... [4] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-010-9093-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-010-9093-1
tommi 5y ago
I love it how we can do this complex stuff. Though being a 90s kid, I imagine doing a T9 based brain-computer interface would be easier and faster.
chaostheory 5y ago
Reading this, I can't help but think of this great novella, Free Radical, based on System Shock http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/ http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/
blobbers 5y ago
How long until this is used in interrogations of criminals...
citilife 5y ago
I've worked alongside a group researching similar techniques, it doesn't actually need to be implants - http://bretl.csl.illinois.edu/projects http://bretl.csl.illinois.edu/projects I think we were able to get up to something like 20 characters per minute, but it was largely UX design. You can go from 6 -> 20 characters. I wouldn't be surprised if the implants improve the speed, but UX could probably play an equally large impact.
- hadsed 5y ago
  i think i believe that. what is the easiest thought abstraction that can be captured by our sensors? well the abstraction is largely defined by the UI. i like to think of it like language. UI components (words) come together to enable complex actions (sentences or thoughts). it evokes questions, like what language does the brain speak in certain contexts for certain outputs? that's gonna be interesting to follow. what if we all think super differently and that makes it hard? i can't imagine why, but i don't have a background in real brains it may be that our current "AI" tools might be helpful--they're really good at composing "languages" for tying together different types of data. seems that tying noisy brain sensors data to our English alphabet might be an example of that.
warent 5y ago
This is amazing! I'm assuming when they say "imagining" they mean visualizing it as a mind picture? I wonder how this works for folks with aphantasia. Do you imagine the motor action of writing? Can a paralyzed person still do that?
varispeed 5y ago
This is awesome, but also terrifying. The way the world is going, it is not hard to predict that in the future this kind of device will be used to tackle thought crime or "zap" you if you think of something government doesn't like.
spoonjim 5y ago
Why does this article not mention the names or institutions of the authors?
_rpd 5y ago
> 200 electrodes in the participant's premotor cortex Is finding the right neurons just luck? Does the person somehow adapt to the interface?
- djoshea 5y ago
  Not really. Lots of neurons in this part of the brain modulate their activity to movement in heterogeneous ways. The algorithm details vary, but at some level you’re trying to find a 2d x/y velocity signal encoded in the 200d neural signals. This decoder is a bit more sophisticated (using deep learning style approaches), but a Kalman filter was state of the art for a long time. For the adaptation, there’s a rich literature of neuroscientists in this field studying how the participant adapts to the control characteristics of the decoder, and how the decoding algorithm can be designed to adapt after seeing more data during use. Here’s one paper if you’re interested http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~liam/research/pubs/merel-fox-coadaptation.pdf http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~liam/research/pubs/merel-fox-c...
ashton314 5y ago
This is amazing. Think of how liberating implants like this will be to people with locked-in syndrome or with less-serious diseases! Personally I've struggled with some RSI. Fortunately I've figured out a good way to manage it, but the thought of loosing my ability to type terrifies me. I could see a mature version of this technology being safe and common enough to be an elective thing; then I wouldn't have to worry about hurting my hands!
ChuckMcM 5y ago
That is seriously creepy. And I REALLY hope if they make it into a product that you can turn it off when you are asleep because I know I'm not the only one who dreams about writing code sometimes and I don't want find myself debugging something I dreamed about the previous night with only a vague memory of having written it.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  I'd quite like to get dream recordings to be honest, though not to the point of wanting to have an implant just for that purpose.
lgeorget 5y ago
I'd like to see a followup on that body of research with Chinese. I wonder if we'd have lower, higher or just similar accuracy.
dahart 5y ago
Even the free-form mode 75 character per minute sounds amazingly fast for a thought interface. I wonder what it's like to use. I know there have been many attempts at this, and they're steadily improving, but I watched a talk at EvoMusArt 2007 where researchers used a smaller array of cranial electrodes to have the user control a mouse. That it worked blew my mind. But they talked about how slow and noisy it was to get the cursor from one side to the other... maybe a minute IIRC. What I remember most distinctly was the researcher said it was physically draining to do, that after 5-7 minutes of this activity they would be sweating and exhausted, without moving.
Alupis 5y ago
Can someone explain what is new about this generation of the tech? People have been able to move mouse cursors and type using only their brain and tiny implants for decades... so far Neuralink seems to just be repeating these experiments, but receives a lot more hype. Here's an article from 2006[1] with someone moving a mouse cursor and clicking things with a similar tiny brain implant. Is there something new here, or just the Musk train? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/science/13brain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/science/13brain.html
- RamRodification 5y ago
  For me, having also seen the cursors and clicking type stuff in the past, what seems new to me (although I don't know for sure that it actually is new) is that they can now read minds on the fidelity of unique letters rather than just more simple "directions" like up, down, in, out.
- Ardon 5y ago
  Previous efforts were more inaccurate, you may remember hearing jargon like “alpha waves” or “beta waves”. Participants would learn to move cursors by learning to create the neurological activity that was being listened for. This, on the other hand, is watching for complex neural activity, in that it learns what pattern appears when a participant pictures drawing an A. Think of the difference like: before the input was controlled by turning your whole body, and now the input can take individual sign language letters.
  - cma 5y ago
    >hearing jargon like “alpha waves” or “beta waves”. Participants would learn to move cursors by learning to create the neurological activity that was being listened for. Previous efforts included moving a cursor with the implanted Utah array, which I don't think was just based on broad brain waves was it? Are you thinking of non-invasive devices? Neuralink didn't invent implanted microelectrode arrays. Some of their press has been around being the first one wirelessly connected to a receiver, but it wasn't first there either. Mainly their roadmap for scaling to more and more electrodes and their custom chip for processing is what's new I think, but they aren't sure if the polymer coating they are using for will hold up long term. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3715131/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3715131/
5440 5y ago
FDA approved the first BCI a few weeks ago from Neurolutions. Other companies like Synchron are going to beat Neuralink to market as well. https://newatlas.com/medical/first-fda-approved-brain-computer-interface-ipsihand-stroke/ https://newatlas.com/medical/first-fda-approved-brain-comput...
- ktta 5y ago
  I can't comment on who'll come to market first, but invasive BCI (like what's posted), is much harder to justify than non-invasive solutions to the FDA. We have a long way to go before any such solutions will be available for the general public.
ineedasername 5y ago
Give it ten years and Bluetooth and a consumer-grade version would be pretty awesome. Then again, countless potential technologies have be "10 years away" for a long time now.
- LASR 5y ago
  > Give it ten years and Bluetooth I am still waiting for a "good" Bluetooth. It's been more than 10 years.
andred14 5y ago
Yeeeah no what's wrong with voice recognition? Lately these freemason Satanists are all about violating you whenever possible.
AussieWog93 5y ago
Neurosignal decoding was the topic of my PhD (which, to be fair, I quit after a year). Every time an article comes up on the topic, I read through the comments section and realise how full of shit we all are here at HN. Then I read another article and assume the commenters are all smart people who understand the topic at hand. I can't remember what the law that describes this is called, but it is absolutely real.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
- modal-soul 5y ago
  Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes... > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
  - 1cvmask 5y ago
    It baffles me that the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect still doesn’t have it’s own Wikipedia page given how pervasive it is.
- njarboe 5y ago
  Gell-Mann amnesia effect[1] by Michael Crichton. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” [1]https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
sjg007 5y ago
Pretty awesome, pretty clear DNNs are the future for decoding/mapping biological signals/inputs. Tied in with reinforcement learning, amazing.
nhumrich 5y ago
Does this work on people with aphantasia?
escapologybb 5y ago
If anybody from the project is reading this, could you tell me where I should send the application, entrance form, fee or even straight up bribes to get my brain and this technology smushed together please? I'm quadriplegic and since lockdown began last March I've not left this bed once. That's not hyperbole, I literally mean that I haven't left the spot in this bed I'm in right now, writing this comment to you all. So Yeah, connecting with the world like this is something I need to be a part of. I really don't have words to describe how life changing this would be.
- devindotcom 5y ago
  You might ask if you can test out this one - no surgery required. https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/04/cognixions-brain-monitoring-headset-enables-fluid-communication-for-people-with-severe-disabilities/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/04/cognixions-brain-monitorin...
- cbsks 5y ago
  Francis Willett is the lead author on the paper. Here’s his contact info: https://profiles.stanford.edu/francis-willett https://profiles.stanford.edu/francis-willett
- air7 5y ago
  What are you using to type now?
  - spicybright 5y ago
    Likely a hired personal care assistant.
  - _Qeomash_ 5y ago
    Depending on if they can move their neck much they might have a forehead dot to track movement for a mouse cursor and a tongue/lip device for clicking. Then it's just onscreen keyboards. Other devices I've heard of are cheek movement or even eye tracking.
  - lhjn 5y ago
cmndctrl 5y ago
my hands were always too slow for my brain
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
Great tech for this exact use case. But I'm dreading that people will start doing it on sane persons that just want an upgrade. I've read enough Sci-Fy to have a list of 1000 ways it can end badly, and we only need one. People are dumb enough to get phished by email, gov is spying on any phone, pirates manage to access to nuclear plant, and you want to connect your brain to a network?
- techdragon 5y ago
  I’ll give you a positive counterpoint, my immediate thoughts from the headline alone were “great, finally a decent way to ensure I never suffer from locked in syndrome”, “wonder how invasive it is”, “I’m not in the right mood to even open this link”, and finally a small shudder as I try to avoid thinking about locked in syndrome by starting to focus on other tasks.
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    Sure, I can see plenty of good it can do. Unfortunately, I think the wrong it has the potential to do to the human as a specie outbalances it by an order of magnitude. It's useless to worry though, we are a careless race, we will use it no matter what, and we will hurt yourself in the process. I just hope it will not be too much.
cjohansson 5y ago
This sounds so cool, I wish I could try it out, usually I never think about letters when typing, only words and they are executed by my fingers instantly non-consciously, I'm curious how this system would work with a fast-typer like myself

(Should be characters rather than words.) Very impressive; I wonder if future versions will eventually even exceed the speed of speech or typing.

Engineering-MD 5y ago
Yes I just came to put an addendum on for characters not words. But as you said very very impressive. This could massively improve patient’s quality of life by being able to communicate much quicker
_Microft 5y ago
This artifical interactive knowledge entity wants access to your attention and emotional state. Think "Accept" to allow permanent access [*]. Think "More info" to instantly know our privacy policy. This is fine. [*] We will add your technological and biological distinctiveness to our own.
- arunkant 5y ago
  Resistance Is Futile
- SamBam 5y ago
  In the same way that irreversible actions on legacy keyboard systems are confirmed by typing in a series of words, MentalKeyboard will require you to think of a complex thought. Delete all funds from your bank account? To confirm, think of a polka-dotted elephant. Otherwise, just think of anything else.
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    I'm not sure if you did it on purpose, but when I read: > To confirm, think of a polka-dotted elephant. I immediately though: How does a polka-dotted elephant look like??? I guess my bank account is blank now :( .
    - jwuphysics 5y ago
      This would pose a different kind of problem for people with aphantasia.
  - xtorol 5y ago
    "I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood, something that could never, ever possibly destroy us: Mr. Stay-Puft."
  - dasyatidprime 5y ago
    You would want to offer a specific something else for the user's executive function to latch onto immediately, even if you continue to interpret anything other than the narrow confirmation pattern as "cancel", just so there isn't only one immediate, recent attractor for "think of something".
    - SamBam 5y ago
      thatwasthejoke
  - taneq 5y ago
    > To confirm, think of a polka-dotted elephant. You monster! :D
  - newsbinator 5y ago
    To confirm, think of a $thing continuously for 10 seconds
matz1 5y ago
I think so and it probably will require some skills to fully utilize it where kids in the future will start learning to use it from the early age. I image this is how I probably will become 'obsolete' in regards of technology just like my parent can't catch up with todays technology.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
amiga-workbench 5y ago
You're reminding me of the augmented 16 fingered prosthetic hands from Ghost in The Shell, much safer than connecting your cyberbrain to a random computer system. I imagine a future version of this technology would move beyond converting mental keystrokes into input and instead work on more abstract ideas. Imagine if your IDE could auto-generate certain design patterns as you think about them, instead of forcing you to manually type them out.

Datenstrom 5y ago

It seems Vim may finally have a challenger for the title of editing text at the speed of thought at some point.

chexx 5y ago
Interestingly the constraint of only being able to use a simplified alphabet would let Vim "supercharge" this tech. My assumption is that translating the thought "delete the current line that the cursor is on" to the actual action is still far away. And then expanding that to something like "delete the current line that the cursor is on and all the lines above it" might be even more difficult. But the equivalent operations in normal mode are "dd" and "dgg", this interfaces very nicely with the implant.

pioughd 5y ago

It's not 90 wpm it's 90 characters per minute. Big difference. Still awesome.

dang 5y ago
Fixed now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135360 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27135360).

tyingq 5y ago

Might be good to remove the ?comments=1 from the linked url so it doesn't scroll you past the article.

dang 5y ago
Done. Thanks!

pgroves 5y ago

All it needs to be able to do is page-down or scroll-down and I want it (I have RSI problems in my hands).

wizzwizz4 5y ago
You can already get a gaze-tracking program to do this. (You can prototype one in MIT Scratch – yes, really!)
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
I think a foot pedal might be an easier solution than a neural implant, at least for a desktop computer

silicon2401 5y ago

I remember when I first learned to touch-type as a child, and for many years after, I would sometimes 'type' things out on my legs, tabletops, notebooks. At first it was to practice, but after I had mastered typing I kept doing it just because it was still novel to be able to type and feel like I knew how to use technology. Doing that made me realize that typing a character is a very specific and atomic action (compared to writing by hand), as well as an automatic one (once you learn how to touch-type). I wonder if the performance of this solution could be improved by training it to detect the mental impulses that occur when a trained typist imagines typing a character, rather than when the person imagines writing out a character.

sneak 5y ago
I still do that (tap things out in qwerty when not at a keyboard) constantly. I type well over 100wpm, and qwerty is very, very deep in my brain. On occasions I am significantly intoxicated (pretty rare for me) I can still type accurately at >50wpm even if my words are slurred. There have been times I wanted to switch layouts but qwerty is just too far in there for too many decades.
- lazysheepherd 5y ago
  I've been practicing touch typing for over 5 years now. I seem to be capped at around ~65 WPM. I sometimes wonder if it will stay there, or will it improve. I take this to test my speed: https://10fastfingers.com/advanced-typing-test/english https://10fastfingers.com/advanced-typing-test/english Now I've tried to take the test again after roughly a year, out of curiosity, and I got around 75 several times. Maybe it will improve very slowly past this level? Do you perhaps remember how the improvement trend was with you?
  - sneak 5y ago
    I have been over 100wpm (on qwerty) since a teenager, and I'm in my late 30s now, so unfortunately no. (My scores are routinely 115-125 these days.)

yosito 5y ago

90 characters per minute is quite slow. I would expect they could get faster by having the user imagine moving a cursor over an onscreen swipe keyboard.

tiborsaas 5y ago
I suggest you to watch the video
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Kiro 5y ago
They address this in both the article and the video. Their previous version was exactly that and this is twice as fast.

idiotsecant 5y ago

I wonder if this is capable of interpreting more complex characters? I wonder if a patient who previously was able to write in simplified Chinese, for example, might be able to write faster?

kbenson 5y ago

Hmm, since they are having someone imagine writing a character our and using recognition on it, I wonder if there's gains to be had to switching to a simplified writing, like Palm did for their PDAs in the past with Graffiti.[1] 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffiti_(Palm_OS)

melling 5y ago
With autocompletion and advanced prediction 90 characters a minute could be effectively much more. https://www.tabnine.com/ https://www.tabnine.com/
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  I'd love a neural interface to Dasher, which adaptively learns as you use it which letter combinations are the most popular, and adjusts over time to make it easier and faster to input common text. It would be wonderful integrated with a context and language sensitive IDE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasher_(software) https://github.com/dasher-project https://github.com/dasher-project http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/ http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/ >To make the interface efficient, we use the predictions of a language model to determine how much of the world is devoted to each piece of text. Probable pieces of text are given more space, so they are quick and easy to select. Improbable pieces of text (for example, text with spelling mistakes) are given less space, so they are harder to write. The language model learns all the time: if you use a novel word once, it is easier to write next time. [...] >Imagine a library containing all possible books, ordered alphabetically on a single shelf. Books in which the first letter is "a" are at the left hand side. Books in which the first letter is "z" are at the right. In picture (i) below, the shelf is shown vertically with "left" (a) at the top and "right" (z) at the bottom. The first book in the "a" section reads "aaaaaaaaaaaa..."; somewhere to its right are books that start "all good things must come to an end..."; a tiny bit further to the right are books that start "all good things must come to an enema...". [...] >.... This is exactly how Dasher works, except for one crucial point: we alter the SIZE of the shelf space devoted to each book in proportion to the probability of the corresponding text. For example, not very many books start with an "x", so we devote less space to "x..." books, and more to the more plausible books, thus making it easier to find books that contain probable text. The classic Google Tech Talk by the late David MacKay, the inventor of Dasher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpOxbesRNBc&ab_channel=GoogleTechTalks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpOxbesRNBc&ab_channel=Googl... It's based on the concept of concept of arithmetic coding from information theory. http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/dasher/ http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/dasher/ Ada Majorek, who has ALS, uses it with a Headmouse to program (and worked on developing a new open source version of Dasher) and communicate in multiple languages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvHQ83pMLQQ&ab_channel=DasherAAC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvHQ83pMLQQ&ab_channel=Dashe...

hcurtiss 5y ago

Title should be updated to 90 characters per minute. 90 wpm would be legitimately fast.

whimsicalism 5y ago
90 wpm and I would be wanting to get one myself!
- buildbot 5y ago
  Yeah a 90wpm interface to a computer mentally would be incredible. Combine that with something like GPT3, use it to do natural language command line processing… If anyone is working on this I’d pay like 5k for a non invasive solution! ;)
  - swader999 5y ago
    If it helped me think at 90 wpm that'd be even better.
etrautmann 5y ago
90 characters per minute is still "legitimately fast" for someone who cannot type otherwise!
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Right, but 90 wpm would be faster than most people could ever do on a conventional keyboard; it's a whole other level.
  - qwertox 5y ago
    It would be interesting to see how people compare in speed, assuming that the technology itself is not a bottleneck. We could directly measure how fast a child thinks, or a CEO vs. a homeless. Eventually we would be able to pinpoint mental problems by measuring the time it takes to think about a certain topic, check if the mind "locks up" for a couple of seconds on a seemingly unrelated topic which got triggered by the context the mind was thinking about. We could pinpoint the unrelated topic and have a base for a psychotherapy which could be more accurate than by just talking around in order to get to know the patient. Let's say a group of 10 have to think out the ordering process at a Starbucks where every step has been provided by a list. An average of 20 seconds is used to do this +- 5 seconds. If there is an outlier, one could start to dig deeper into what exactly is making the mind to wander off. Multiple tests in different scenarios could then decide if the outlier is a slow thinker in general, or if it is a certain thing which triggers this wandering off.

heavyset_go 5y ago

Having followed the development and trials of various types of brain implants, the realities and side-effects of living with brain implants can be more than most bargained for. Deep brain stimulation implants (which this isn't) in particular can be incredibly nasty even for those for whom implants are a last resort.

iancmceachern 5y ago
Like what? Infection?
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  Infection is one aspect. Another aspect is the battery system that powers the implant, they're usually implanted in the chest with a wire that goes up the neck to the skull. There was a case[1] where tension developed over that wire, leading to pain, immobility and destruction of the connection in brain tissue: > Steve had the surgery at Stanford, in November, 2012. After the surgery, he had “severe cognitive decline” and a slew of physiological adversities. “The leads [wires] were 18 inches longer than they needed to be, so they coiled it up in the chest and at the top of the head; I could feel them externally,” he says. “And the leads were too tight. I could move my ear and my chest would move, too,” he says of a condition called “bowstringing,” whereby scar tissue encapsulates the wires (partly from the body’s natural response to foreign material), which has been documented in DBS cases and can cause permanent complications. Steve also had many symptoms that were ultimately diagnosed as shoulder and jaw muscle atrophy, spinal accessory nerve palsy and occipital nerve palsy. He reported all adverse effects immediately and continuously throughout the first year of the study, but the trial doctors continually told him that they’d never heard of such symptoms with DBS, even though nerve damage and DBS wire-related “hardware” complications were among the potential risks listed on the informed consent document. Because they're relatively experimental, it's almost impossible to find a doctor/surgeon/etc that will choose to work on you should you run into complications. If you have problems with the programming of the devices themselves, there isn't much you can do as a patient, and even specialists can't help you. The only people who can help you are those who developed the device. That can be a problem for a device that's meant to remain implanted until death. Removal is also a huge issue, because brain tissues grow on and around the implants. There are people who want their implants removed, but can't find a doctor who is willing to remove them because of the potential for brain injury and the resulting liability. They can also cause personality changes, suicidal behavior and even homicidal behavior[4]. There are documented cases of increased impulsivity and impaired executive function, which have led to pathological gambling and shopping. Breakdowns of relationships and the ability to work are also documented[3]. Here's an article on the subject[1], and there are numerous studies that look into such effects, like this one[2] that aggregates dozens of studies. [1] https://www.madinamerica.com/2015/09/adverse-effects-perils-deep-brain-stimulation-depression/ https://www.madinamerica.com/2015/09/adverse-effects-perils-... [2] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.00118/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.0011... [3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.00118/full#h9 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2013.0011... [4] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-010-9093-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12152-010-9093-1

tommi 5y ago

I love it how we can do this complex stuff. Though being a 90s kid, I imagine doing a T9 based brain-computer interface would be easier and faster.

chaostheory 5y ago

Reading this, I can't help but think of this great novella, Free Radical, based on System Shock http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/ http://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/

blobbers 5y ago

How long until this is used in interrogations of criminals...

citilife 5y ago

I've worked alongside a group researching similar techniques, it doesn't actually need to be implants - http://bretl.csl.illinois.edu/projects http://bretl.csl.illinois.edu/projects I think we were able to get up to something like 20 characters per minute, but it was largely UX design. You can go from 6 -> 20 characters. I wouldn't be surprised if the implants improve the speed, but UX could probably play an equally large impact.

hadsed 5y ago
i think i believe that. what is the easiest thought abstraction that can be captured by our sensors? well the abstraction is largely defined by the UI. i like to think of it like language. UI components (words) come together to enable complex actions (sentences or thoughts). it evokes questions, like what language does the brain speak in certain contexts for certain outputs? that's gonna be interesting to follow. what if we all think super differently and that makes it hard? i can't imagine why, but i don't have a background in real brains it may be that our current "AI" tools might be helpful--they're really good at composing "languages" for tying together different types of data. seems that tying noisy brain sensors data to our English alphabet might be an example of that.

warent 5y ago

This is amazing! I'm assuming when they say "imagining" they mean visualizing it as a mind picture? I wonder how this works for folks with aphantasia. Do you imagine the motor action of writing? Can a paralyzed person still do that?

varispeed 5y ago

This is awesome, but also terrifying. The way the world is going, it is not hard to predict that in the future this kind of device will be used to tackle thought crime or "zap" you if you think of something government doesn't like.

spoonjim 5y ago

Why does this article not mention the names or institutions of the authors?

_rpd 5y ago

> 200 electrodes in the participant's premotor cortex Is finding the right neurons just luck? Does the person somehow adapt to the interface?

djoshea 5y ago
Not really. Lots of neurons in this part of the brain modulate their activity to movement in heterogeneous ways. The algorithm details vary, but at some level you’re trying to find a 2d x/y velocity signal encoded in the 200d neural signals. This decoder is a bit more sophisticated (using deep learning style approaches), but a Kalman filter was state of the art for a long time. For the adaptation, there’s a rich literature of neuroscientists in this field studying how the participant adapts to the control characteristics of the decoder, and how the decoding algorithm can be designed to adapt after seeing more data during use. Here’s one paper if you’re interested http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~liam/research/pubs/merel-fox-coadaptation.pdf http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~liam/research/pubs/merel-fox-c...

ashton314 5y ago

This is amazing. Think of how liberating implants like this will be to people with locked-in syndrome or with less-serious diseases! Personally I've struggled with some RSI. Fortunately I've figured out a good way to manage it, but the thought of loosing my ability to type terrifies me. I could see a mature version of this technology being safe and common enough to be an elective thing; then I wouldn't have to worry about hurting my hands!

ChuckMcM 5y ago

That is seriously creepy. And I REALLY hope if they make it into a product that you can turn it off when you are asleep because I know I'm not the only one who dreams about writing code sometimes and I don't want find myself debugging something I dreamed about the previous night with only a vague memory of having written it.

anigbrowl 5y ago
I'd quite like to get dream recordings to be honest, though not to the point of wanting to have an implant just for that purpose.

lgeorget 5y ago

I'd like to see a followup on that body of research with Chinese. I wonder if we'd have lower, higher or just similar accuracy.

dahart 5y ago

Even the free-form mode 75 character per minute sounds amazingly fast for a thought interface. I wonder what it's like to use. I know there have been many attempts at this, and they're steadily improving, but I watched a talk at EvoMusArt 2007 where researchers used a smaller array of cranial electrodes to have the user control a mouse. That it worked blew my mind. But they talked about how slow and noisy it was to get the cursor from one side to the other... maybe a minute IIRC. What I remember most distinctly was the researcher said it was physically draining to do, that after 5-7 minutes of this activity they would be sweating and exhausted, without moving.

Alupis 5y ago

Can someone explain what is new about this generation of the tech? People have been able to move mouse cursors and type using only their brain and tiny implants for decades... so far Neuralink seems to just be repeating these experiments, but receives a lot more hype. Here's an article from 2006[1] with someone moving a mouse cursor and clicking things with a similar tiny brain implant. Is there something new here, or just the Musk train? [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/science/13brain.html https://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/science/13brain.html

RamRodification 5y ago
For me, having also seen the cursors and clicking type stuff in the past, what seems new to me (although I don't know for sure that it actually is new) is that they can now read minds on the fidelity of unique letters rather than just more simple "directions" like up, down, in, out.
Ardon 5y ago
Previous efforts were more inaccurate, you may remember hearing jargon like “alpha waves” or “beta waves”. Participants would learn to move cursors by learning to create the neurological activity that was being listened for. This, on the other hand, is watching for complex neural activity, in that it learns what pattern appears when a participant pictures drawing an A. Think of the difference like: before the input was controlled by turning your whole body, and now the input can take individual sign language letters.
- cma 5y ago
  >hearing jargon like “alpha waves” or “beta waves”. Participants would learn to move cursors by learning to create the neurological activity that was being listened for. Previous efforts included moving a cursor with the implanted Utah array, which I don't think was just based on broad brain waves was it? Are you thinking of non-invasive devices? Neuralink didn't invent implanted microelectrode arrays. Some of their press has been around being the first one wirelessly connected to a receiver, but it wasn't first there either. Mainly their roadmap for scaling to more and more electrodes and their custom chip for processing is what's new I think, but they aren't sure if the polymer coating they are using for will hold up long term. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3715131/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3715131/

5440 5y ago

FDA approved the first BCI a few weeks ago from Neurolutions. Other companies like Synchron are going to beat Neuralink to market as well. https://newatlas.com/medical/first-fda-approved-brain-computer-interface-ipsihand-stroke/ https://newatlas.com/medical/first-fda-approved-brain-comput...

ktta 5y ago
I can't comment on who'll come to market first, but invasive BCI (like what's posted), is much harder to justify than non-invasive solutions to the FDA. We have a long way to go before any such solutions will be available for the general public.

ineedasername 5y ago

Give it ten years and Bluetooth and a consumer-grade version would be pretty awesome. Then again, countless potential technologies have be "10 years away" for a long time now.

LASR 5y ago
> Give it ten years and Bluetooth I am still waiting for a "good" Bluetooth. It's been more than 10 years.

andred14 5y ago

Yeeeah no what's wrong with voice recognition? Lately these freemason Satanists are all about violating you whenever possible.

AussieWog93 5y ago

Neurosignal decoding was the topic of my PhD (which, to be fair, I quit after a year). Every time an article comes up on the topic, I read through the comments section and realise how full of shit we all are here at HN. Then I read another article and assume the commenters are all smart people who understand the topic at hand. I can't remember what the law that describes this is called, but it is absolutely real.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...
modal-soul 5y ago
Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes... > In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  It baffles me that the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect still doesn’t have it’s own Wikipedia page given how pervasive it is.
njarboe 5y ago
Gell-Mann amnesia effect[1] by Michael Crichton. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” [1]https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

sjg007 5y ago

Pretty awesome, pretty clear DNNs are the future for decoding/mapping biological signals/inputs. Tied in with reinforcement learning, amazing.

nhumrich 5y ago

Does this work on people with aphantasia?

escapologybb 5y ago

If anybody from the project is reading this, could you tell me where I should send the application, entrance form, fee or even straight up bribes to get my brain and this technology smushed together please? I'm quadriplegic and since lockdown began last March I've not left this bed once. That's not hyperbole, I literally mean that I haven't left the spot in this bed I'm in right now, writing this comment to you all. So Yeah, connecting with the world like this is something I need to be a part of. I really don't have words to describe how life changing this would be.

devindotcom 5y ago
You might ask if you can test out this one - no surgery required. https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/04/cognixions-brain-monitoring-headset-enables-fluid-communication-for-people-with-severe-disabilities/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/05/04/cognixions-brain-monitorin...
cbsks 5y ago
Francis Willett is the lead author on the paper. Here’s his contact info: https://profiles.stanford.edu/francis-willett https://profiles.stanford.edu/francis-willett
air7 5y ago
What are you using to type now?
- spicybright 5y ago
  Likely a hired personal care assistant.
- _Qeomash_ 5y ago
  Depending on if they can move their neck much they might have a forehead dot to track movement for a mouse cursor and a tongue/lip device for clicking. Then it's just onscreen keyboards. Other devices I've heard of are cheek movement or even eye tracking.
- lhjn 5y ago

cmndctrl 5y ago

my hands were always too slow for my brain

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

Great tech for this exact use case. But I'm dreading that people will start doing it on sane persons that just want an upgrade. I've read enough Sci-Fy to have a list of 1000 ways it can end badly, and we only need one. People are dumb enough to get phished by email, gov is spying on any phone, pirates manage to access to nuclear plant, and you want to connect your brain to a network?

techdragon 5y ago
I’ll give you a positive counterpoint, my immediate thoughts from the headline alone were “great, finally a decent way to ensure I never suffer from locked in syndrome”, “wonder how invasive it is”, “I’m not in the right mood to even open this link”, and finally a small shudder as I try to avoid thinking about locked in syndrome by starting to focus on other tasks.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Sure, I can see plenty of good it can do. Unfortunately, I think the wrong it has the potential to do to the human as a specie outbalances it by an order of magnitude. It's useless to worry though, we are a careless race, we will use it no matter what, and we will hurt yourself in the process. I just hope it will not be too much.

cjohansson 5y ago

This sounds so cool, I wish I could try it out, usually I never think about letters when typing, only words and they are executed by my fingers instantly non-consciously, I'm curious how this system would work with a fast-typer like myself