Brain-computer Interface in the eyes of Technology Bull: great progress but still far away, will not try it in person
Beijing, September 3 (Xinhua) at present, the brain-computer interface has been able to help control seizures and reduce tremors in patients with Parkinson's disease, and its next wave of technology will deal with more complex applications, such as restoring human language ability and regulating emotions.
One of the frontiers in this work is Eddie Eddie Chang, a neurosurgeon at the will Institute for Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco and a pioneer in brain-computer interface technology. In July 2021, he led a groundbreaking study that translated brain signals from paralyzed men into words on the screen.
The goal of their research is to decipher the brain activities that support complex human behaviors such as language and emotion, Dr. Zhang said in an interview. trying to develop treatments that can help people who are unable to speak or suffer from neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety disorders.
How does the brain-computer interface help restore language skills? He says the language is special. It is just one of the unique and defined behaviors of human beings as a species. Therefore, it is very exciting to try to understand how the human brain handles such a unique behavior. One of the biggest challenges now is to convert electrical signals. The brain uses electrical signals as its own language to communicate. The language has its own logic, its own code. The real challenge is to understand how the code works.
Principle of ▲ brain-computer interface
The signal we are interpreting is nothing like what we are trying to decode, such as text. They look like graffiti on the screen, and these patterns are very complicated. Much of the work done by researchers now takes advantage of advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning in computer science because they are very, very powerful pattern recognition methods.
Technological evolution Dr. Zhang said that 10 to 15 years ago, research in the field of brain-computer interfaces was still at the level of trying to decode vowels. Over the past five years, it is incredible that our research has made considerable progress in trying to decode words from a single sound development. This is just the beginning. The first project we published in this field last year was a vocabulary of 50 words. Our current efforts have two directions: one is to expand the vocabulary beyond the 50 words of will College, while ensuring a high degree of accuracy.
The second thing we need to do is to switch from saying a word and making it appear on the screen to synthesizing the words you can hear. Therefore, our goal is to get paralyzed people not only to think of a word, and then to make it appear on the screen to write things, but to actually synthesize these sounds. This turns out to be a very, very difficult and huge challenge because it is very complex to sound for a very large vocabulary. For a small number of words, it is now very feasible.
▲ Dr. Zhang demonstrates brain-computer interface
Another area that excites us is not just listening to language, but actually controlling the face to make it feel like it's not only talking, but also showing the expressions you usually see when you talk to people face to face. The reason we think this is important is that it will help people learn and feel that the brain-computer interface is essentially part of the way they speak because it feels more natural.
How does brain-computer interface help people with mental illness? We really want to know what it is like when a person is dealing with emotions normally, and what the signals of people with depression are like, when they can't regulate their emotions properly. We hope that by understanding these electrical signal patterns, we can use them as biomarkers to understand when and which part of the brain is involved in depression. The second thing, and more important, is to use this information to intervene and regulate these areas so that people will feel more normal, as if they are not suffering from dysfunctional depression.
Can you use the brain-computer interface to enhance yourself? Personally, I can't. I hope I can do better in many ways, but I personally respect myself very much. Part of the reason I'm hesitant about this is the risk, and we're talking about brain surgery. Secondly, to a large extent, we are still in the learning stage. We are far away from any enhancement scene I can imagine. Moreover, there is a moral bottom line. I do not support this right now unless we establish a better ethical regulatory framework in this area.
