Could a person
who is paralyzed and unable to speak, like physicist Stephen Hawking, use a
brain implant to carry on a conversation? That’s the goal of an expanding
research effort at U.S. universities, which over the last five years has proved
that recording devices placed under the skull can capture brain activity
associated with speaking. Researchers at the University of California, San
Francisco, are working towards building a wireless brain-machine interface that
could translate brain signals directly into audible speech using a voice
synthesizer.
The effort to
create a speech prosthetic builds on success at experiments in which paralyzed
volunteers have used brain implants to manipulate robotic limbs using their
thoughts. That technology works because scientists are able to roughly
interpret the firing of neurons inside the brain’s motor cortex and map it to
arm or leg movements. Researchers are now trying to do the same for speech.
It’s a trickier task, in part because complex language is unique to humans and
the technology can’t easily be tested in animals.
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