{"id":24550,"date":"2024-09-24T20:12:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T20:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackrockneurotech.com\/?p=24550"},"modified":"2025-04-25T20:22:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T20:22:00","slug":"a-l-s-stole-his-voice-a-i-retrieved-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackrockneurotech.com\/insights\/a-l-s-stole-his-voice-a-i-retrieved-it\/","title":{"rendered":"A.L.S. Stole His Voice. A.I. Retrieved It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Last month, Casey Harrell&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/08\/14\/health\/als-ai-brain-implants.html\">story of regained communication<\/a> using our brain-computer interface made headlines. Today, we want to spotlight the brilliant minds who made such a feat possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The groundbreaking study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, was led by:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Dr. Nicholas Card, Neuroscientist, University of California, Davis<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dr. David Brandman, MD, PhD, Neurosurgeon, University of California, Davis<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dr. Sergey Stavisky, Neuroscientist, University of California, Davis<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dr. Leigh H., Neurologist, Brown University &amp; Dept. of Veterans Affairs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Their approach uniquely combined high-density intracortical recording with rapid calibration and AI-powered decoding, setting a new standard in BCI performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Key innovations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1.)  Four Utah Arrays were implanted in the &#8220;speechiest parts of the brain,&#8221; as Dr. Stavisky puts it for The New York Times. This includes area 55b and three areas in the ventral precentral gyrus associated with speech production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2.)  256 intracortical recording sites from our NeuroPort Arrays (3.2mm x 3.2mm, inserted 1.5mm into cortex).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>3.) Advanced algorithms translated neural signals into speech with unprecedented accuracy. The system uses a neural network to predict phonemes every 80ms, followed by open-source language models to translate these into words and sentences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The results speak for themselves:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>99.6% accuracy with a 50-word vocabulary on the first day of use, after only 30 minutes of training data<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>90% accuracy with 125,000 words by day two, after just 1.4 additional hours of system training<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>97.5% sustained accuracy over eight months, with the participant communicating at a rate of approximately 32 words per minute<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Casey used the neuroprosthesis to communicate a total of 22,679 sentences during 72 sessions over 8.4 months (that&#8217;s 248.3 cumulative hours), demonstrating both the system&#8217;s durability and its practical applicability in daily life. As Dr. Brandman shared, &#8220;It went from a scientific demonstration to a system that Casey can use every day to speak with family and friends.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This research builds on years of work in the BCI field, including contributions from Dr. Edward Chang at UCSF, whose team developed different speech implants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At Blackrock Neurotech, we&#8217;re proud to provide the neural interface technology that enables such groundbreaking research. We&#8217;re committed to pushing the boundaries of what&#8217;s possible in neurotechnology, always with the goal of improving lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A huge thank you to all the researchers, clinicians, and most importantly, BCI Pioneers like Casey who make this work possible. Together, we&#8217;re writing the future of neurological care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can read more about Casey&#8217;s story <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/08\/14\/health\/als-ai-brain-implants.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last month, Casey Harrell&#8217;s story of regained communication using our brain-computer interface made headlines. Today, we want to spotlight the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":24552,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.0 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A.L.S. Stole His Voice. A.I. Retrieved It | Media | Blackrock Neurotech<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last month, Casey Harrell&#039;s story of regained communication using our brain-computer interface made headlines. Today, we want to spotlight the brilliant\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blackrockneurotech.com\/insights\/a-l-s-stole-his-voice-a-i-retrieved-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A.L.S. Stole His Voice. A.I. Retrieved It | Media | Blackrock Neurotech\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last month, Casey Harrell&#039;s story of regained communication using our brain-computer interface made headlines. 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