Prediction of Speech Onset by Micro-Electrocorticography of the Human Brain

Recent technological advances show the feasibility of offline decoding speech from neuronal signals, paving the way to the development of chronically implanted speech brain computer interfaces (sBCI). Two key steps that still need to be addressed for the online deployment of sBCI are, on the one hand, the definition of relevant design parameters of the recording arrays, on the other hand, the identification of robust physiological markers of the patient's intention to speak, which can be used to online trigger the decoding process. To address these issues, we acutely recorded speech-related signals from the frontal cortex of two human patients undergoing awake neurosurgery for brain tumors using three different micro-electrocorticographic (μECoG) devices. First, we observed that, at the smallest investigated pitch (600μm), neighboring channels are highly correlated, suggesting that more closely spaced electrodes would provide some redundant information. Second, we trained a classifier to recognize speech-related motor preparation from high-gamma oscillations (70-150Hz), demonstrating that these neuronal signals can be used to reliably predict speech onset. Notably, our model generalized both across subjects and recording devices showing the robustness of its performance. These findings provide crucial information for the design of future online sBCI.