For the first time, researchers have unravelled the brain signals that control writing letters by hand! During the experiment of the new brain implant, a fully paralysed man has been able to 'write' in his own handwriting on a screen! 

The Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), as they are currently being called, have so far been able to demonstrate their ability to restore motor skills and the ability to point and click with a computer cursor. While a person's bodily movement could stop because of a bodily injury or disease, the brain's ability to perform the task remains intact. The researchers have tapped into this ability of the brain to help physically challenged people regain control. Previously, participants have been able to type 40 characters per minute by 'thinking and pointing' at letters on the screen. 

However, the innovation to be able to write in real-time with brain signals is groundbreaking. "The innovation could, with further development, let people with paralysis rapidly type without using their hands", says the study coauthor Krishna Shenoy, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at Stanford University who jointly supervised the work with Jaimie Henderson, a Stanford neurosurgeon. 

The tiny sensors embedded into the brain gave the participant, a 65-year-old man paralysed from the neck down due to a spinal cord injury, the ability to imagine and translate his movements into activity. When he imagined writing, a machine-learning algorithm picked up the sensors from the neurons and recognised the patterns his brain produced with every letter. The participant was able to type, copy sentences, answer questions at the same rate as someone similar to his age, typing on a smartphone! 

Next, this team of scientists intend to work on developing methods to help people communicate as they have decoded the neural activity that enables speech.