NSF Award
1901986
This award will support participant travel costs to the international workshop, "Thought to Speech" Step 3: Science, Engineering and Clinical Planning of an Intracortical Communication System for Adults with Cerebral Palsy (BrainGate-CP)", being held at the Hilton Chicago O`Hare Airport on November 28, 2018. The summit will bring together people with expertise not only in brain-computer interfaces (BCI's) and cerebral palsy, but also in neuroscience, language development and related fields to promote a comprehensive understanding of the challenges involved in creating BCI's for this purpose. <br/><br/>A "thought-to-speech" BCI would provide an opportunity for people born without the ability to speak as well as relieve the burden of acquired speech impairments from those who acquire such a condition later in life. The intelligence of people with motor and communication impairments is routinely underestimated. A thought-to-speech or rapid-text BCI would circumvent this fallacious assumption.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
