Brain Signals to Speech Decoder Can Help Paralyzed People Speak %

Scientists in San Francisco have managed to tap into brain signals that are responsible for speech. This technology would be first of its kind to create a system that could eventually enable people to voice their thoughts.

A team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, led by neurosurgeon Edward Chang, recorded the brain signals of five patients with epilepsy who were already undergoing brain surgery. These recordings were then fed to a computer model of the human vocal system, which ultimately managed to generate a speech that was about half intelligible.

Abstract thoughts weren’t picked up but rather only signals that communicated with vocal organs.

“The study that we did was involving people having neurosurgery. We are really not aware of currently available noninvasive technology that could allow you to do this from outside the head,” Chang commented. “Believe me, if it did exist it would have profound medical applications.”

Although still in its initial stages, this experiment has opened possibilities for inventions that once seemed futuristic like sending texts straight from the brain. It could help paralyzed people to speak.