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MiBMI miniature chip outperforms competitors
Swiss scientists have developed a miniature chip for implantation in the brain. Now, Neuralink has a serious competitor that translates human thoughts into text. According to the developers, the transcription accuracy is 91%.
Scientists in Switzerland have made a breakthrough in the development of brain-computer interfaces. Their device is the smallest of its kind and outperforms its competitors.
The authors of this development are a team from Lausanne. They created the MiBMI device, which consists of two chips with a surface area of 8 square millimetres. By comparison, Neuralink’s parameters are around 32 x 8 mm.
In addition to size, the Swiss development has other advantages:
- low power consumption;
- minimally invasive;
- the ability to process massive amounts of information in real time.
The chip is an integrated system, and its functionality does not require the support of other devices. This design makes it unique in the market. For example, Neuralink involves the implantation of 64 electrodes in the brain. At the same time, the information coming from them is processed with the help of an external application.
How the device works
The chip analyses electrical activity in the brain. It picks up the signals and converts them into text. It is important to note that the device has not yet been used on humans but has only been tested on realistic models. To do this, the scientists fed the chip with neural recordings of brain activity. These recorded how a person represented certain letters. The chip interpreted these letters and combined them into words. The accuracy of the text representation was more than 90%.
It uses a new method to analyse the brain’s speech signals. During the study, the scientists looked at certain neural markers. They got activated when a person read the text and represented each letter. The miniature MiBMI device similarly reads these markers to a stenographic record. This allows the chip to focus on specific signals rather than processing huge amounts of data. This feature has made it possible to create a tiny device and reduce its power consumption. Scientists believe that, in the future, the introduction of the chip into the brain will significantly speed up human learning processes.
At the moment, MiBMI interprets 31 symbols, which is the best result among similar systems. At the same time, scientists are improving the device so that it can recognise more than 100 characters.
The chip could become an indispensable aid for people with disabilities, such as those with motor system problems or the disease amyotrophic sclerosis.
The development, presented in August 2024, has received a positive response from the scientific community. The chip opens up new possibilities for implantable systems to help people with various diseases.