
Brain-sensing technology allows typing at 12 words per minute - upen
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/5149.html
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ChuckMcM
I am not sure what is more surprising, that you can get 12WPM by simply using
your brain, or that you can train monkeys to transcribe the New York Times or
hamlet.

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djoshea
They're not transcribing it, so much as selecting the keys one would need to
press in order to type the text. That is, the correct key lights up, and they
move the cursor and mentally "click" to select it. This serves two purposes:

\- WPM is a difficult metric to "game", since if they make a mistake they have
to select the backspace key, and then select the correct key again.

\- It's a proof of concept demonstration that a human (e.g. in the
BrainGate[1] clinical trial) could use this prosthetic system to communicate
in text. When a human were driving the system, the keys wouldn't light up;
they'd just type freely.

[1] [http://www.braingate.org/](http://www.braingate.org/)

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bonoboTP
Ah, I was also tricked by "transcribe"... This is why reading science articles
is so much better when there is also a comment section (HN/Reddit etc). So
many articles don't actually point out that is going on _really_.

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r_smart
I've pretty much stopped reading articles entirely. I'd rather click through
to the study, read the abstract, then skim through looking for anything
interesting or obviously wrong. Combine that w/a high quality comment site as
you mention, and it's a much more informative process, and takes about the
same amount of time.

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etrautmann
This paper is from a colleague in my lab at Stanford - happy to answer
questions.

For intuition, this is like clicking on an on-screen keyboard, so the typing
speed is very high given the constraint of focusing on each key as a separate,
discrete movement.

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bonoboTP
It may be faster to use something like Dasher instead of an on-screen
keyboard:
[http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/DasherSummary2.htm...](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/DasherSummary2.html)

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swsieber
Part of me wonders though - things seem a lot less discreet in dasher... but
given that input is really in one dimension, and not two, it might be able to
work faster...

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JoshTriplett
> things seem a lot less discreet in dasher

There are discrete versions of dasher that operate using a single digital
switch or actuator, rather than an analog input. As long as you can feed in
one bit of information, Dasher can work with that.

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M_Grey
For a bit of context, Stephen Hawking can only manage about 1 WPM last I read
about him; I'm sure everyone here could appreciate a twelvefold increase in
their ability to express themselves, even if the end result wasn't speedy.

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ktRolster
Yeah, win for Stephen Hawking. Hopefully it gets even better.

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M_Grey
Definitely. As bad as it would be to struggle with expressing a single word,
that must be even more agonizing if you're a genius in high demand.

I also wonder if something like this could be adapted to test for locked-in
syndrome?

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SilasX
Important note: they were using monkeys and didn't take advantage of the
speedups that humans would use, like adaptive letter-guessing/autocomplete:

>“Also understand that we’re not using auto completion here like your
smartphone does where it guesses your words for you,”

That would reduce the "distance" you have to move the cursor on average.

(Several years ago I had the idea to combine the accessibility software Dasher
with the "Neural impulse actuator", which tranduces brain waves, but never
went through with it, though I bought the tech.)

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JackFr
Well they're not using autocomplete, but the software sitting between the
electrodes and the cursor is a black box as far as the article goes. If the
software is trained or calibrated, what's to say that it isn't picking up some
information from the structure of English.

Also depending the setup of the onscreen keyboard, it too could have error
reducing aspects built in.

Also it's unclear whether the 12 wpm is actual wpm with back spacing and
correction, or whether it's an 'adjusted' wpm based on the error rate.

This isn't to say that it's not an impressive result regardless. Just that I'm
more skeptical of the 12 wpm.

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WhitneyLand
Instead of moving a mouse, how much harder would it be to just try to learn a
thought pattern for each letter?

Or better, learn 50 "commands" which could then be assigned to anything be it
letters, tasks, phrases, etc.

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aoverton07
IINM I think the limitation is in the ability to read such small signal
changes. Considering all the noise (especially with topical sensors) and
dealing with microvolts, it can be trivial to distinguish an eye blink where
you're suddenly contracting muscles close to the brain. As opposed to
distinguishing the thought pattern between thinking about a "dog" vs a "cat"

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poslathian
The paper itself is not yet available, but the same researchers have published
before on this work:
[http://www.stanford.edu/~shenoy/GroupResearchPublications.ht...](http://www.stanford.edu/~shenoy/GroupResearchPublications.htm)

[http://www.stanford.edu/~shenoy/GroupPublications/KaoEtAlIEE...](http://www.stanford.edu/~shenoy/GroupPublications/KaoEtAlIEEETBME2016-Preprint.pdf)

Reading the latter reveals the implant side is a 96 channel utah array.

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justAlittleCom
How does this compare to eyes tracking? 90% of the hyper fancy things using
brain activity get pwned by simple eye tracking. Or are not usable in real
life due to the equipment needed.

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creshal
Even if eye tracking is better (and IIRC it is), this is still valuable for
patients that don't have any other option left (like Stephen Hawking soon).

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bonoboTP
This still relies on visual feedback (you need to move a cursor on a screen).
It would be better if you just had to think the letter itself, not drive a
cursor over it.

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riskable
Not much of a difference, actually. Once you've got your _brain_ trained to
select the letters by location you can remove the eye tracking part and just
use abstract thought.

"I'm thinking of a letter... On the far left of the keyboard, middle row."

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bonoboTP
I think there's not enough bandwidth for such information density. These
usually work with 2D directional commands, you're driving the cursor
up/down/left/right. You're not thinking of "letter E", but look at the screen
and think of the direction where the cursor has to move from its current
location to drift to E.

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visarga
On the other hand, it shows the primitive state of brain computer interfaces,
that they are implanting a few electrodes in a region of the brain related to
the hands, in order to move a mouse cursor. We're decades away from thinking
to computers. What is the state of the art in brain interfaces?

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coldtea
> _We 're decades away from thinking to computers._

Considered most governments and corporations, the more decades, the better...

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hx87
If the steady erosion of privacy is combined with a steady loss of government
arresting powers (i.e. coercion through violence) and the steady decline of
social conservatism (i.e. coercion through blackmail and hypocrisy), I'm
surprisingly okay with that.

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mamon
Government powers can only go up, never down. One possible exception is when
government is in total decay, but that's only temporary state before it gets
replaced by other strong government (through revolution or external conquest)

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pmoriarty
_" Government powers can only go up, never down."_

That's not really true. There were significant curtailments of US government
power after scandals like Watergate, the Pentagon Papers, the revelations of
MK ULTRA, and all the spying that was done on journalists, civil rights
leaders, etc.

Of course, now there's been a backlash in the other direction, and it will
probably get a lot worse before it will get better. But history has shown that
it can get better.

Also, see the history of the Stasi in East Germany and Stalin in the USSR.

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redirectleft
Err.. isn't monkeys transcribing a New York Times article even more amazing?

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creshal
Amazing maybe, but not really news. Monkeys could pilot the Mercury capsule,
too. With several months of intense training, you can make them do a lot of
tasks involving pattern recognition. Reliable brain-sensing, on the other
hand, _is_ news.

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daveguy
Ahem. They didn't pilot the capsule. They were passengers.

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creshal
Thank you for your opinion, Chuck.

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creshal
Since people don't seem to get the reference: "Mercury astronauts are
passengers, not pilots" was a prejudice against the budding manned space
program, spread by among others Chuck Yeager. It seemed to hurt their ego that
even a monkey could do it (…after months of training, which included
electroshock therapy).

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petra
Connecting brains to computers in order to type ??? Or Elon's Musk "neural
lace" that enables interface between AI and brains ??? Such sad, shallow
visions for such powerful technologies.

Maybe instead , we'll start really asking what is the good life(for both
society and the person), we'll probably get answers like(from various
philoshophers and religions): life full of love, compassion, empathy, peace,
trancendence, meaning, service, self-actualiztion, health, etc.

And better understanding, control and training of the brain(maybe by using
fmri neurofeedback) may be a great tool in achieving all of those qualities in
a safe, effective and efficient manner, and of course fully based on personal
choice.

How can this expand what it means to be human ? how could it shape society ?

And instead, we're talking about typing with the brain.

And we see this kind of thinking everywhere. for example , the world is filled
with tons of "social" technologies, but we can't even get video chat with eye-
contact, at people's homes ?

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kafkaesq
_How can this expand what it means to be human? How could it shape society?_

"Typing with the brain" can not only be very useful, but potentially life-
transforming for those with mobility impairments -- e.g. quadriplegics, and
those fully or partially paralyzed for other reasons.

