Swiss study: Humans can train their brain to communicate with machines
Machines can read the thoughts of trained humans better
Keystone-SDA
Select your language
Generated with artificial intelligence.
Listening: Swiss study: Humans can train their brain to communicate with machines
Humans can learn to share their thoughts with machines. In a new study, researchers from the University of Geneva have shown that so-called brain-machine interfaces can read the thoughts of specially trained people better than those of untrained people.
This content was published on
2 minutes
Keystone-SDA
Deutsch
de
Maschinen können Gedanken von trainierten Menschen besser lesen
Original
The researchers hope that this will enable a new form of communication for people who can no longer speak after a stroke, for example, as the University of Geneva announced on Monday.
For the study, the researchers attached electrodes to the scalp of 15 volunteers in order to detect and record voltage fluctuations in the brain. Wired up in this way, the volunteers had to imagine the syllables “fo” and “gi”, i.e. only pronounce them internally.
More
More
Explainer: Why US health funding cuts are rattling Swiss science
This content was published on
The Trump administration has upended funding by the National Institutes of Health. What does it mean for biomedical research in Switzerland?
The brain activity was analysed in real time. The participants received visual feedback on a screen that showed how well the system had understood the syllables. The clearer their perception, the more a display filled up. They trained in this way for five days.
Importance of training underestimated
Despite individual differences in learning progress, the volunteers became significantly better at communicating the two syllables with the machine, as the researchers showed in the study published in the journal Communications Biology. In contrast, a control group with irregular visual feedback showed no comparable progress.
According to the university, this research emphasises the previously underestimated importance of training when using brain-machine interfaces.
Translated from German by DeepL/jdp
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Popular Stories
More
Life & Aging
Zurich: how the world capital of housing shortages is tackling the problem
In Switzerland more people are being referred to electrical therapies or psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Are there similar approaches where you live?
Is your place of origin, your Heimatort, important to you?
Every Swiss citizen has a Heimatort, a place of origin, but many have never visited theirs. What’s your relationship with your Heimatort? What does it mean to you?
Swiss appeal to US Treasury Secretary for better cooperation
This content was published on
Swiss Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter met her US counterpart, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, in Washington on Thursday.
This content was published on
After reaching a low point at the end of 2024, the Swiss job market showed the first signs of a slight recovery in the first quarter.
This content was published on
Switzerland's dioceses are making arrangements for the faithful to attend the Pope's funeral, including public screenings.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.