Wetenschapsforum

A revolutionary new device that reads a person's thoughts and turns them into speech could soon change the lives of paralysed patients around the world.The Neuralynx System is being developed by a team of scientists led by Professor Frank Guenther at Boston University. Users will simply have to think of what they want to say and a voice synthesizer will translate the thoughts into speech almost immediately.

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The 26-year-old volunteer was asked to think of a series of basic vowel sounds. The researchers were able to translate these and vocalise them in just a fraction of a second using the new system. His accuracy increased with each practice session from 45 per cent to 89 per cent.

Scientists began the experiment three years ago, when they implanted an electrode in the patient's brain on the boundary of the two regions that govern speech and movement. Within four months, neurites had grown into the electrode and begun producing neural signals. When the patient was asked to think of different vowel sounds the electrode acted to amplify and convert his thought signals into FM radio waves. These were transmitted wirelessly to a receiver coil that had been attached to the patient's head. From here they were sent to a special recording system that turned them into digital data. this was then decoded and turned into speech by two programmes running on a computer. The whole process took just 50 milliseconds, which meant it effectively worked in real time.

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