How many seconds does it take a word to go from thought to audible speech?Last year researchers clocked it at an amazing 50 milliseconds or .5 of a second. Research teams in Utah and Massachusetts have been working on decoding the neural pattern of speech into sound and managing the lightening speed that naturally occurs in humans.
I mentioned Dr. Hawking in the previous post. He is the renowned British scientist who suffers from a form of Lou Gehrig's disease and is one of thousands "locked in" or cognitively active but disabled from speech or speaking. Dr. Hawking communicates now, at age 68, communicates by twitching one muscle in his right cheek. The action sends an infrared beam to a computer that translates his signals into words. In article published today it is estimated that in 2to 3 years he should be able to do what most do now without a second thought: think a thought and then hear it spoken..
I recommend two good articles. The first one was published almost a year ago in December of 2009. It documented how researchers in Boston implanted electrodes in the temporal lobe, the area where speech takes place. As most know, playing in any area of the brain is extremely risky and could cause irreperable damage if the surgeon is off a millimeter.
Enter the 2010 team. A second article published today documents how researchers in Utah have gotten even more sophisticated placing electrodes near, but not in the brain itself, vastly improving safety.
For a quick overview on the first set of research, scientists embed an electrode in a subject's brain. That electrode then amplifies the person's neural signals which are converted to FM radio waves. These waves are then transmitted wirelessly across the head and over to two coils serving as receiving antennas.Then these signals are routed into a system that digitizes, sorts and decodes them. The results are fed into a program that synthesizes speech which runs on desktop or laptop computer.
