Ein einzelnes Gehirnimplantat stellt die zweisprachige Kommunikation eines gelähmten Mannes wieder her

Tracking syllables of words lets English and Spanish training assist each other.

If things ultimately work out as hoped, brain implants will ultimately restore communication for those who have become paralyzed due to injury or disease. But we’re a long way from that future, and the implants are currently limited to testing in clinical trials.

One of those clinical trials, based at the University of California, San Francisco, has now inadvertently revealed something about how the brain handles language, because one of the patients enrolled in the trial was bilingual, using English and Spanish. By tracking activity in the area of the brain where the intention to speak gets translated into control over the vocal tract, researchers found that both languages produce consistent signals in this area, so training the system to pick up English phrases would help improve its recognition of Spanish.

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The new work is designed to make that more likely. Part of [a clinical trial called BRAVO](https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03698149) (brain-computer interface for restoration of arm and voice), it involved placing relatively simple implants (128 electrodes) into the motor region of the brain—the part that translates intentions to perform actions into the signals needed to trigger muscles to execute them.

In terms of speech, this means the neurons needed to convert the desire to say a word into the muscle activity needed to control the mouth and tongue, expel sufficient breath, and tension the vocal cords. This is downstream of the portion of the brain where word choices are made, and English and Spanish presumably differ (which is in turn downstream of where meaning is sorted out, where the two languages might overlap).