By: Mark Serrels
April 30, 2019
Sure, speaking is great, and an effective method of communication, but what if that’s not a possibility? What if you suffer from some sort of paralysis or neurological impairment and you literally can’t speak?
Researchers at the University of California think they’ve made a crucial first step at solving the problem. Using a “state-of-the-art brain-machine interface”, neuroscientists art UC San Francisco say they have successfully been able to convert brain waves into literal speech.
By placing electrodes on the heads of study participants, the researchers took information from measured brain activity, and fed that data into a “virtual vocal tract”: an anatomically correct computer simulation designed to accurately mimic movements from the lips, jaw, tongue and larynx. The end result: something that absolutely resembles human speech.