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The stat on cursor control speed with BCIs surprised me
I was reading through a study from the University of Pittsburgh last month. They said the average user can only type about 40 characters per minute with a brain implant. I figured by now we'd be way faster given all the hype. That seems painfully slow for something pitched as the future of communication. Has anyone tried one of these systems and found a way around the speed bottleneck?
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roberts.jordan6d ago
Actually messed around with a BCI setup at a neuro conference last year, not the full implant but the external cap version they use for demos. What worked for me was letting my brain relax and not trying so hard to focus on the cursor. The slower you move your thoughts the easier it is for the system to track you. The speed bottleneck is real but I found that if you treat it like steering a shopping cart instead of a gaming mouse you get way less errors and less fatigue. Ended up around 50 characters per minute after a few tries just by breathing slower and zoning out a bit.
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elliot_miller226d ago
40 characters per minute is rough, yeah. I remember reading that same study and thinking the same thing. The way they test it is also super controlled, like in a lab setting with a cursor on a screen. In real life your muscles twitch and your brain gets tired, so it's even slower. I don't think we're getting past that bottleneck until the implants can read more than just motor cortex signals at once.
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