A new breakthrough has enabled researches to translate brain signals into speech with a 90 percent accuracy rate. Allowing patients that are paralysed and cannot speak a possible method of communication in around two to three years of development.
The teams lead Professor Bradley Greger, a bioengineer at Utah University said ‘We were beside ourselves with excitement when it started working,’
The experimental breakthrough came when the team attached two button sized grids of 16 tiny electrodes to the speech centres of the brain of an epileptic patient. The researchers then recorded the brains signals as the patient repeatly read 10 words: yes, no, hot, cold, hungry, thirsty, hello, goodbye, more and less.
The system is still in the early stages at the moment but with development but could bring communication to paralysed people who cannot speak due to so-called “locked-in” syndrome.
Via Telegraph