A high-performance speech neuroprosthesis

Francis R. Willett (), Erin M. Kunz, Chaofei Fan, Donald T. Avansino, Guy H. Wilson, Eun Young Choi, Foram Kamdar, Matthew F. Glasser, Leigh R. Hochberg, Shaul Druckmann, Krishna V. Shenoy and Jaimie M. Henderson
Additional contact information
Francis R. Willett: Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Stanford University
Erin M. Kunz: Stanford University
Chaofei Fan: Stanford University
Donald T. Avansino: Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Stanford University
Guy H. Wilson: Stanford University
Eun Young Choi: Stanford University
Foram Kamdar: Stanford University
Matthew F. Glasser: Washington University in St. Louis
Leigh R. Hochberg: Providence VA Medical Center
Shaul Druckmann: Stanford University
Krishna V. Shenoy: Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Stanford University
Jaimie M. Henderson: Stanford University

Nature, 2023, vol. 620, issue 7976, 1031-1036

Abstract: Abstract Speech brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to restore rapid communication to people with paralysis by decoding neural activity evoked by attempted speech into text1,2 or sound3,4. Early demonstrations, although promising, have not yet achieved accuracies sufficiently high for communication of unconstrained sentences from a large vocabulary1–7. Here we demonstrate a speech-to-text BCI that records spiking activity from intracortical microelectrode arrays. Enabled by these high-resolution recordings, our study participant—who can no longer speak intelligibly owing to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—achieved a 9.1% word error rate on a 50-word vocabulary (2.7 times fewer errors than the previous state-of-the-art speech BCI2) and a 23.8% word error rate on a 125,000-word vocabulary (the first successful demonstration, to our knowledge, of large-vocabulary decoding). Our participant’s attempted speech was decoded at 62 words per minute, which is 3.4 times as fast as the previous record8 and begins to approach the speed of natural conversation (160 words per minute9). Finally, we highlight two aspects of the neural code for speech that are encouraging for speech BCIs: spatially intermixed tuning to speech articulators that makes accurate decoding possible from only a small region of cortex, and a detailed articulatory representation of phonemes that persists years after paralysis. These results show a feasible path forward for restoring rapid communication to people with paralysis who can no longer speak.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06377-x

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