ABOVE: Coauthor Gopala Anumanchipalli holds the type of intracranial electrode array used in the study.
UCSF
A new computer program translates brain signals into language. The technology tracks the electrical messages passed to muscles in and around the mouth to decode what the brain is trying to say. Further tests are needed, but the developers say it could be used to design brain implants to help people who have suffered a stroke or brain disease communicate.
“We want to create technologies that can reproduce speech directly from human brain activity,” Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, who led the research, said during a press conference. “This study provides a proof of principle that this is possible.” He and his colleagues describe the results in Nature today (April 24).
The technique is highly invasive and relies on electrodes placed deep in the brain. As such, it has ...
