The study, which appears in the Oct. 4, 2021, issue of Nature Medicine, represents a landmark success in the years-long effort to apply advances in neuroscience to the treatment of psychiatric disorders.
A new way of treating major depression has been developed by scientists at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). The approach builds on earlier work that identified signature electrical activities in the brain that correlate to different moods, and brain regions that when stimulated relieve depression. In the new two-step method, the researchers identify a symptom-specific neural biomarker and a treatment location where focal electrical stimulation improves the symptoms. They then implant a device in the identified location, capable of sensing and stimulating electrical impulses that triggers therapeutic deep brain stimulation when the severity of the symptom increases.
Researchers at UC San Francisco have successfully developed a âspeech neuroprosthesisâ that has enabled a man with severe paralysis to communicate in sentences, translating signals from his brain to the vocal tract directly into words that appear as text on a screen.
The achievement, which was developed in collaboration with the first participant of a clinical research trial, builds on more than a decade of effort by UCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang, MD, to develop a technology that allows people with paralysis to communicate even if they are unable to speak on their own. The study appears July 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Brain signals translated into speech give paralyzed man back his words
Scientists at UC San Francisco have successfully developed a speech neuroprosthesis device that has enabled a man with severe paralysis to communicate in sentences, translating signals from his brain to text on a screen.
UCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang, MD, has spent more than a decade developing a technology that allows people with paralysis to communicate even if they can t speak! Chang s achievement was developed in collaboration with the first participant of a clinical research study.
The research, presented as a study in the
New England Journal of Medicine, is the first successful demonstration of direct decoding of complete words from brain waves of someone who cannot speak due to paralysis.