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Scientific Paper Summary Authors: Francis R. Willett, Donald T. Avansino, Leigh R. Hochberg, Jaimie M. Henderson & Krishna V. Shenoy Year: 2017 Research Article: High-performance brain-to-text communication via handwriting Journal: Nature Volume: 593 Article number: 7858 Page numbers: 249-254

The media analysed was an article by The Guardian – a popular media news website. The media article was written by Ian Sample, a Science Editor working for The Guardian who graduated with a PhD in biomedical materials from the University of London. The media article discusses research done by Willet et al. on a method that allows paralysed people to type using electrical signals from the brain. Paralysis is a medical condition where a person is unable to move due to damage done to their nervous system. When a person is paralyzed, he can still think about feeling and moving through the motor cortex. A team led by Francis R. Willett explored the possibility of using a Brain Computer Interfaces (BCIs) as a method of allowing paralyzed people to type. Commercially available assistive typing devices today rely on eye trackers. Instead, the team utilized a BCI called BrainGate. BrainGate uses a neurochip that tracks brain activity, translates the brain activity into 0s and 1s that a computer understands, and outputs the results. The team then programmed an algorithm to process the output by associating brain signals with specific letters. They showed a letter on the screen then asked the patient to imagine writing it. Whenever the patient would imagine a letter, certain neurons would fire creating an electrical signal that the neurochip would pick up. This allows the patient to just imagine writing and the BCI will automatically translate the brain activity into text. The media story was incredibly accurate at summarizing the published media article. The article opens by describing patient T5 and “mindwriting.”, which refers to the paper’s method of allowing patients to type using the motor cortex. The author does a great job by using this memorable analogy to simplify a complex topic. The author then proceeds to compare previous BCI technology and BrainGate. This demonstrates that the author did his research and is aware of similar applications managing to accurately explain to a lay audience why this system is an improvement. Finally, the author described how the algorithm worked by summarizing that the researchers “recorded activity from the brain region that would have controlled his (T5) movements”. This demonstrates that the article is able to simplify these technical details from the original paper in order to give a general overview of how the algorithms work whilst retaining much of the accuracy. In conclusion, the media article was a fairly accurate representation of the original research paper. The media article clearly explained a complex topic and managed to keep lay audiences engaged.

References: The Guardian. (2021). Paralysed man uses “mindwriting” brain computer to compose sentences. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/12/paralysed-manmindwriting-brain-computer-compose-sentences [Accessed 18 Aug. 2021]. Willett, F.R., Avansino, D.T., Hochberg, L.R. et al. High-performance brain-to-text communication via handwriting. Nature 593, 249–254 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03506-2 [Accessed 18 Aug. 2021]....