We speak at a rate of roughly 160 words every minute. That speed is incredibly difficult to achieve for speech brain implants.

Decades in the making, speech implants use tiny electrode arrays inserted into the brain to measure neural activity, with the goal of transforming thoughts into text or sound. They’re invaluable for people who lose their ability to speak due to paralysis, disease, or other injuries. But they’re also incredibly slow, slashing word count per minute nearly ten-fold. Like a slow-loading web page or audio file, the delay can get frustrating for everyday conversations.

A team led by Drs. Krishna Shenoy and Jaimie Henderson at Stanford University is closing that speed gap.

Year 2022 😗

Experts believe it is destined to become the world’s fifth major cancer treatment after surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.

The light-activated therapy forces cancer cells to glow in the dark, helping surgeons remove more of the tumours compared with existing techniques – and then kills off remaining cells within minutes once the surgery is complete. In a world-first trial in mice with glioblastoma, one of the most common and aggressive types of brain cancer, scans revealed the novel treatment lit up even the tiniest cancer cells to help surgeons remove them – and then wiped out those left over.

Trials of the new form of photoimmunotherapy, led by the Institute of Cancer Research, London, also showed the treatment triggered an immune response that could prime the immune system to target cancer cells in future, suggesting it could prevent glioblastoma coming back after surgery. Researchers are now also studying the new treatment for the childhood cancer neuroblastoma.