UC Davis Health researchers developed a brain-computer interface that let a man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis communicate independently at home for nearly two years, according to a study published in Nature Medicine.
The system was developed by researchers at UC Davis in collaboration with Brown University and the Mass General Brigham Neuroscience Institute. Neurosurgeon David Brandman, MD, implanted the investigational device into the brain of trial participant Casey Harrell in 2023. Dr. Brandman is co-principal investigator and co-senior author of the study and co-director of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab.
The device translates Mr. Harrell’s neural signals into text and enables cursor control on a computer. Over nearly two years, Mr. Harrell used the brain-computer interface system at home for more than 3,800 hours without researcher support, communicating more than 183,000 sentences and nearly 2 million words at an average speed of 56 words per minute. He rated 92% of decoded sentences as accurate or mostly correct, while the system scored above 99% word accuracy in controlled testing against a 125,000-word vocabulary.
“For years, BCIs have been proof-of-concept devices that lived in highly controlled research labs,” Dr. Brandman said in a June 15 news release. “This work shows that we may have crossed a threshold, by empowering a person with paralysis to speak on his own terms.”
Neuroscientist Sergey Stavisky, PhD, the study’s co-senior author and Dr. Brandman’s co-director at the Neuroprosthetics Lab, said the improvements bring the technology “closer to clinical usefulness.”
Mr. Harrell is a participant in the ongoing BrainGate2 clinical trial, which UC Davis continues to enroll patients in for BCI research targeting ALS, spinal cord injury and other neurological conditions.
The BCI results follow a separate, seven-year, $40 million NIH award that Sacramento-based UC Davis Health received in June to renew its Clinical and Translational Science Center, which supports the broader pipeline moving lab research into patient care. UC Davis has held continuous NIH translational science funding since 2006.
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