For those who are paralyzed to the extent that they can no longer speak, communication is logically a complicated and fatiguing process.

And while scientists have been working for decades to try to help these people communicate more effectively, even more naturally, this is a complex, expensive, and ethically challenging process.

But the goal of helping paralyzed individuals to communicate has never stopped, and recent developments from a research team at Stanford University have taken this to the next level.

Rather than just ‘speaking’, the scientists are using brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) – tiny devices connected to a computer, which are implanted into the brain – to help externalize a paralyzed person’s inner monologue.

Their fascinating research, which could change the lives of those living with paralysis, was recently published in the journal Cell.

Why? Well previous attempts to help people who cannot speak due to paralysis with communication come at quite a cost to the individuals.

While the technology is effective in conveying the person’s words to the outside world, it takes a lot of effort, since existing technology requires them to try to speak, as Stanford professor Frank Willett explained in a statement:

“Inner speech (also called “inner monologue” or self-talk) is the imagination of speech in your mind — imagining the sounds of speech or the feeling of speaking, or both. We wanted to know whether a BCI could work based only on neural activity evoked by imagined speech, as opposed to attempts to physically produce speech. For people with paralysis, attempting to speak can be slow and fatiguing, and if the paralysis is partial, it can produce distracting sounds and breath control difficulties.”

With a BCI trained to decode thoughts instead of actual attempts at speech, however, the researchers found that conveying messages that they thought, rather than tried to say, were effectively detected by the technology – though it was not as fluent or clear as the current attempted speech technology.

Nevertheless, the researchers are ebullient, believing that with system upgrades and further tweaking, the technology could soon allow paralyzed people to speak by merely thinking, avoiding the fatigue and frustration associated with trying to form words.

This significant advancement does not come without ethical concerns however, with the potential of a person’s private thoughts being revealed to the outside world a very real risk and an ethical concern.

Anticipating this, the researchers put password-protected safeguards in place, so that the user had to first think of a personally-set, password phrase that would be unusual to organically think of (for the trial, they went with ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’), and start and end any intended speech thoughts with this phrase.

Across the trial, this solution turned out to be highly effective, as Willett continued:

“For next-generation BCIs that are intended to decode inner speech directly — which could enable higher speeds and greater comfort — we demonstrated a password-protection system that prevents any inner speech from being decoded unless the user first imagines the password (for example, a rare phrase that would not otherwise be accidentally imagined such as “as above, so below”). Both of these methods were extremely effective at preventing unintended inner speech from leaking out.”

Though the technology is not yet sufficiently capable of providing paralyzed individuals with clear and efficient ways to turn thoughts into speech, the team suggest that this is not far off, with both hard- and software upgrades in progress. In the meantime, the researchers continue their study of the brain to advance the BCIs as far as possible.

For paralyzed people, the eventual success of this technology will be a gamechanger.

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