Finally, scientists have found a way to convert thoughts into speech.
Neuroscientists from the University of California (UC) have recently made a major development toward this remarkable achievement by successfully translating brain waves into intelligible speech for the first time. They have successfully been able to convert brain waves into literal speech.
The researchers developed a setup that translates brain waves into words by focusing on the physical movements related to speech, rather than the sound of the words trying to be communicated. They found looking at the intended movements of the tongue, larynx and other speech mechanisms allowed them to reproduce voice sounds in a more reliable way than, say, trying to match brain waves to predicted speech sounds.
The research work of these scientists was recently published in the journal Nature. This work seems quite identical to what we have seen in the invention of the bionic chip by a Pakistani scientist which helps to understand communication between human tissue and an electronic device. Edward Chang, one of the project’s co-authors, said in a press briefing;
“It’s been a longstanding goal of our lab to create technologies to restore communication for patients with a severe speech disability. We want to create technologies that can reproduce speech directly from human brain activity. This study provides a proof of principle that this is possible.”
Watch how a computer translates thoughts into spoken words:
As you know that the late British Scientist Stephan Hawking was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) at age 21. The motor neuron disease eventually claimed his speech abilities, forcing him to use a hand-held clicker to trigger speech. On the other hand, the research work by UC’s student would omit the middle man, enabling users to produce speech without the help of a computer or movement-sensitive system.
