A cortical implant gets its encoder: Braincodec restores natural sound on 256 channels, and mice discriminate its patterns as sharply as real tones
Braincodec, an encoding algorithm for auditory-cortex implants, compresses natural sound onto 256 or 512 stimulation channels at a reconstruction SI-SNR near 10, against roughly -30 for cochlear-implant encoders. Its stimulation patterns also resemble auditory-cortex responses, and implanted mice discriminated pure tones through those patterns as precisely as mice hearing real tones.