Cited by 442EEG and Brain-Computer InterfacesNeurobiology of Language and BilingualismTactile and Sensory Interactions

Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings

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Tang, Jerry, LeBel, Amanda, Jain, Shailee, Huth, Alexander G.·2023·Nature Neuroscience

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Abstract

A brain-computer interface that decodes continuous language from non-invasive recordings would have many scientific and practical applications. Currently, however, non-invasive language decoders can only identify stimuli from among a small set of words or phrases. Here we introduce a non-invasive decoder that reconstructs continuous language from cortical semantic representations recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Given novel brain recordings, this decoder generates intelligible word sequences that recover the meaning of perceived speech, imagined speech and even silent videos, demonstrating that a single decoder can be applied to a range of tasks. We tested the decoder across cortex and found that continuous language can be separately decoded from multiple regions. As brain-computer interfaces should respect mental privacy, we tested whether successful decoding requires subject cooperation and found that subject cooperation is required both to train and to apply the decoder. Our findings demonstrate the viability of non-invasive language brain-computer interfaces.

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  • Non-invasive techniques have facilitated decoding of limited vocabularies of imagined words, syllables and speech sounds and reconstruction of semantic content of speech.

    “Although these non-invasive techniques have facilitated decoding of limited vocabularies of imagined words, syllables and speech sounds75,76 and reconstruction of semantic content of speech68 (Fig. 1; Tang et al. 2023), they are not portable — with the exception of EEG — and low spatial or temporal resolution has hindered scaling decoding to larger vocabularies and longer speech segments (senten”

    From The speech neuroprosthesis (2024) · cites this paper as [68]

  • Semantics appear to be encoded in a distributed manner across many cortical regions including prefrontal, speech and language association cortices.

    “Semantics appear to be encoded in a distributed manner, across many cortical regions including prefrontal, speech and language association cortices67,68 (Fig. 1; Tang et al. 2023).”

    From The speech neuroprosthesis (2024) · cites this paper as [68]

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • Recent research shows the potential of ''mind-reading''.

    “The needs to handle novel applications never used before become evident by recent research [144] that shows the potential of ''mind-reading'' [145].”
  • The study in [144] shows the potential of leveraging language models as an autoregressive prior to generate novel sequences that can decode structured sequential information in the form of text from brain signals.

    “For instance, the study in [144] shows the potential of leveraging language models as an autoregressive prior to generate novel sequences that can decode structured sequential information in the form of text from brain signals.”
  • Although the study of human imagination decoding shows human cooperation is required for the approach to work, this may not be a requisite in the future.

    “Although the study of human imagination decoding shows human cooperation is required for the approach to work, this may not be a requisite in the future.”

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Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. [20]Radford A, Narasimhan K, Salimans T. & Sutskever I. Improving language understanding by generative pre-training. Preprint at https://cdn.openai.com/research-covers/language-unsupervised/language_understanding_paper.pdf (2018).
  2. [62]Holtzman A, Buys J, Du L, Forbes M. & Choi Y. The curious case of neural text degeneration. in 8th International Conference on Learning Representations (2020).
  3. [64]Banerjee S. & Lavie A. METEOR: an automatic metric for MT evaluation with improved correlation with human judgments. in Proceedings of the ACL Workshop on Intrinsic and Extrinsic Evaluation Measures for Machine Translation and/or Summarization 65– 72 (2005).
  4. [65]Zhang T, Kishore V, Wu F, Weinberger KQ & Artzi Y. BERTScore: evaluating text generation with BERT. in 8th International Conference on Learning Representations (2020).

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Authors
Tang, J., LeBel, A., Jain, S., & Huth, A. G.
Affiliations
The University of Texas at Austin (US)
Corresponding author
Huth, Alexander G.
Venue
Nature Neuroscience
Published
2023-05
Volume
26
Issue
5
Pages
858-866
ISSN
  • 1097-6256 (ISSN-L)
  • 1546-1726
OpenAlex
W4367609927
Cited by
442
References
67
Citations by year
2026: 105 · 2025: 140 · 2024: 133 · 2023: 60 · 2022: 2 · 2019: 1 · 2013: 1
FWCI
65.59
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
Funders
  • Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
  • U.S. Department of Health & Human Services | NIH | National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (1R01DC020088-001)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › EEG and Brain-Computer Interfaces
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Tactile and Sensory Interactions
Keywords
semantic reconstruction, brain-computer interface, functional MRI, imagined speech, semantic representation, mental privacy
MeSH terms
Brain, Brain Mapping, Language, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Semantics, Speech Perception, Brain-Computer Interfaces

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