A woman who lost her ability to speak due to a stroke underwent a brain implant surgery procedure and got her voice back after nearly two decades.
The brain implantation device was tested on a 47-year-old stroke survivor woman with quadriplegia who is now able to turn her through into real-time speech, The Associated Press reported.
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An assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at UC Berkeley and a co-author of the study published Monday in the journal Nature Neuroscience stated that it “converts her intent to speak into fluent sentences,”
This innovative technology works in real-time, unlike any other brain-computer systems delays conversation.
The team recorded the woman’s brain activity with electrodes as she silently imagined speaking.
Moreover, they used a synthesizer using her voice before suffering from a stroke to recreate the sound she would have made.
Researchers have already trained an AI-centric model to translate her brain signals into sounds.
The system transmits every small unit, roughly a half syllable, into a recorder every 80 milliseconds. It works quickly, just like real-time transcription on a phone call.
Using a person’s actual voice “would be a significant advance in the naturalness of speech.”
Decoding speech that fast could assist the device keep up with the speed of natural conversation, Researchers at Speech and Applied Neuroscience Lab at the University of Kansas, Brumberg said
Experts said that it requires more research, but with “sustained investments,” an upgraded device is expected to be accessible to patients within 10 years.
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