Principal Investigators: Behnaam Aazhang, PhD – Rice and Nitin Tandon, MD – UT Health Title: Micro-scale Real-time Decoding and Closed-loop Modulation of Human Language BRAIN Category: Neuroengineering and Brain-inspired concepts and design

The engineering objective is to develop biocompatible microchips to vastly enhance our insight into language and other cognitive processes and learning. Miniaturized microchips in silicon technology will be developed that can record neural signals, digitize them, and transmit the signals to an in vitro receiver wirelessly.

Abstract

Award Number: #1533688

Humans produce language, which is a defining characteristic of our species and our civilization. We can select words precisely out of a large lexicon with remarkably low error rates. It is perhaps not surprising that this complex speech production system is easily affected by disease. Brain damage induced language disorders affect millions of Americans, and there is little hope of remediation. Research on the anatomical, physiological, and computational bases of speech production has made important strides in recent years but this has been limited by a glaring lack of information on the dynamics of the process. This limitation results from the low spatio-temporal resolution of the available tools to collect data and the effectiveness of the current tools for analysis. Our driving vision ...