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Technology capable of reading brain signals has allowed a group of monkeys to control a cursor on a screen and type at a rate of up to 12 words per minute.

The monkeys saw green and yellow targets on the screen and were trained to move the cursor onto the green target, which represented the correct letter. Characters in the video above have been added after the research to help visualise the programme's interface.


This advanced brain-machine interface (BMI) – developed by Stanford University researchers – lets the monkeys type faster than in previous tests. And in a video of the software used by the team, an on-screen cursor is controlled across a digital keyboard, with the correct letter being typed when the cursor hovers over the green icon. Errors in selection had to be corrected with the "delete key".

Passages of Shakespeare and the New York Times were copied by the animals involved in the study.

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To get the system to work, a multi-electrode array was implanted into the brain, which was able to read signals from one of the regions that directs hand and arm movements. The technology had previously been developed by the Stanford researchers but refined algorithms used for translating brain signals to letter selections meant the animals were able to type faster and more accurately.


"Our results demonstrate that this interface may have great promise for use in people," Paul Nuyujukian a postdoctoral fellow at the university said.

While the 12 words per minute rate achieved by the monkeys in the test may not be achievable by humans – because our brains become distracted by how to spell words, for example, rather than simply copying them which ultimately slows us down – the researchers say it is possible to improve the speed humans using BMIs are capable of typing at.

To test this theory a clinical trial is now being run by a team at the Stanford Neurosciences Institute.


In 2015, Stanford researchers demonstrated a brain-computer interface that allowed two paralysed people to control a cursor with greater accuracy than before.

To move the cursor on the screen the two participants imagined their index fingers moving across a computer trackpad.

During the trial, the humans were able to move the cursor to the on-screen target in an average of 2.5 seconds – an improvement from the previous 8.5 seconds.