Stefan Mileschin

Say whatever is on your mind

Researchers at Columbia University have managed to turn brain signals in the auditory cortex of test subjects into somewhat intelligible speech using a vocoder-like system with audio output cleaned up by neural networks.

In a scientific first, Columbia neuroengineers have created a system that translates thought into intelligible, recognisable speech. By monitoring someone's brain activity, the technology can reconstruct the words a person hears with unprecedented clarity. This breakthrough, which harnesses the power of speech synthesisers and artificial intelligence, could lead to new ways for computers to communicate directly with the brain. It lays the groundwork for helping people who cannot speak, such as those living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or recovering from a stroke, regain their ability to communicate with the outside world.

The findings have been published in the journal Nature. Nima Mesgarani, PhD, the paper’s senior author and a principal investigator at Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute said: “Our voices help connect us to our friends, family and the world around us, which is why losing the power of one’s voice due to injury or disease is so devastating. With today’s study, we have a potential way to restore that power. We’ve shown that, with the right technology, these people’s thoughts could be decoded and understood by any listener.”

Early efforts to decode brain signals by Dr. Mesgarani and others focused on simple computer models that analysed spectrograms, which are visual representations of sound frequencies.

https://fudzilla.com/news/ai/48057-b...aves-to-speech