A chip decodes the “inner monologue” by translating thoughts into words. A revolutionary scenario for those who cannot speak, but also an ethical challenge.
An experimental brain system has shown that it is possible to decode the “inner monologue” of paralyzed individuals, translating their thoughts into words. The remarkable result, obtained by a team from the University of Stanford (United States), was illustrated in a study published on Cell And it represents a historical advancement in the brain-computer interfaces (BCI). So far, the BCI devices could have read the neural signals related to the movement or to the attempts of the Founding, but this appliance goes further: it directly interprets the imagined sentences, without the person emitting any sound.
This result opens up revolutionary scenarios for those who have lost the ability to speak but, presents new and disturbing ethical and legal challenges.
Where it is placed. The chip has been implanted in the medial and ventral regions of the precentral lap, considered a sort of “speech hotspot”, that is, those areas where the brain elaborates the imminence of the speech even if not yet well articulated.
How it works. The device is able to interpret the neural patterns associated with the inner monologue (“inner speech”) and converts them to text, with a vocabulary that includes up to 125,000 words and an accuracy that, for some sentences, reaches 70%. Compared to conventional systems, which provide for the physical attempt to translate a thought into gestures, this method requires less effort and does not depend on the muscles or breathing.
The researchers said that, during experimentation, some transcriptions were also generated in times when patients were not trying to communicate, a sign that the border between thought and word is very thin. To remedy the problem, a mental “on/off” mechanism was inserted, in which the subjects imagined a secret word to activate or deactivate the system.
The problem. In any case, decoding thought involves enormous risks. During the tests, the chip pulled impulses even when the participants were not focused on communication, opening the debate on the so -called “mental leakage”, or “theft of thoughts”, given that an intimate and private thought could be translated by mistake as output, if the system is not calibrated perfectly. In addition to the mental switch already described, there is a further function of sensitive delimitation, i.e. automatic recognition of thematic or spatial areas where neural activity is ignored.
However, the central question remains: what happens to the collected brain data? A mental archive could store preferences, trauma, intimate beliefs, with implications that concern not only commercial use, but also risks of surveillance, psychological manipulation or digital cloning of cognitive identity.
We are not yet at this point, but in the future a series of specific regulations will be needed before any large -scale diffusion.
Rights and risks. The clinical applicability of this experimental chip is still far away. The study remains a conceptual prototype tested on a few subjects and based on a controlled vocabulary, and before similar devices can be used in the health sector or in everyday life, improvements are needed from the point of view of sensitivity, complexity and reliability. Finally, the companies that develop these systems will have to take responsibility for the processing, archiving and use of neural data, in a context where “knowing what a person thinks” can become a very dangerous tool for social control by climbing over the primary function, that is, returning the word to those who can no longer communicate.
