| From your top level comment: > a nurse a laminated piece of A4 paper and a patient who can blink get about 15 characters How is this a relevant comparison? 15 characters per minute is much less than the 15 WORDS per minute performance this work demonstrates > I spent a solid 6 months intimately learning the pros and cons of various existing BCI systems, as well as the exact methods researchers use to make their technology look like a breakthrough when it isn't. Then you should know this is a huge deal. > Specifically, here, they've created a system that can decode one of 50 symbols Previous motor and speech neuroprosthetic systems focused on pointing (controlling cursor) and more recently, handwriting (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03506-2). This work goes gives communication rate similar to the handwriting work, but decoding speech from the motor cortex has been much less understood than that of simple motor movements such as cursor position and velocity control. Even more impressive, the test subject is not even a native English speaker. > They've also cherry-picked the patient that responded the best. Bravo-1 is the only subject they had. > When you peel back the hype, this is about the same performance we've been getting since '08 for an invasive, subdural, non-penetrative array. This is completely, utterly false. See (https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:jx921pv3255/Technical...) for survey of performance of typing BCI. You seem to love to cite your background as a BCI PhD dropout. I should also point out that I have a completed PhD in invasive neuroprosthetics and still work in the field (not that matters when anyone can look up the sources and judge for themselves). |
15 words from a set of 50 (6 bits per "word" vs. 5 per letter in the English alphabet). It's like saying a 100 baud telegraph machine can decode 300 words per second, just so long as those words come from the set of "dot" and "dash".
>but decoding speech from the motor cortex has been much less understood than that of simple motor movements such as cursor position and velocity control.
Cursor position and velocity are outputs, the input is still a self-paced motor imagery task.
>Bravo-1 is the only subject they had.
Fair cop. Maybe they'll get genuinely impressive results with their next patient.
>This is completely, utterly false. See (https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:jx921pv3255/Technical...) for survey of performance of typing BCI.
I posted a link in a comment below showing an ITR of 35bpm from scalp EEG from pre-2010.
>I have a completed PhD in invasive neuroprosthetics and still work in the field
I am truly sorry for your loss.