Scientist test machine that converts thoughts into speech

Brain-machine interface has crossed many seas of uncertainty, and has reached a point where scientists are taming it for real-time synthetic speech production from thought. The concept of transforming brain waves into speech is a project developed specially to assist people left mute by stroke and other afflictions.

brain thoughts to speech

The project lead by researcher Frank Guenther, Boston University with others from Harvard University- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been tested on a 26-year-old man left paralyzed by a brain stem stroke. The man was embedded with an electrode in the 5 millimeters deep in the brain and a computer system was developed to read his thoughts.

The electrode amplifies brain signals and converts them into FM radio waves which are routed into a system to digitize and then are converted into audible sounds by the speech synthesizer. “Speech thought was transmitted into audible sound was about 50 milliseconds -- the same amount of time it typically takes for naturally occurring speech.”

Via: Discovery