Researchers successfully used a brain-computer interface to synthesize speech directly from brain activity in an ALS patient, achieving 80% word recognition accuracy by listeners, showcasing the interface's potential for aiding communication in severe speech impairments.
By Dr. Sushama R. Chaphalkar, PhD.May 8 2024Reviewed by Susha Cheriyedath, M.Sc. In a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers in the United States and the Netherlands used a long-term brain-computer interface implant to synthesize intelligible words from brain activity in a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis .
Background Neurological disorders like ALS can impair speech production, leading to communication challenges, including Locked-In Syndrome . Augmentative and alternative technologies offer limited solutions, prompting research into implantable BCIs for direct brain control. Studies have aimed at decoding attempted speech from brain activity, with recent advances in reconstructing text and acoustic speech.
Speech synthesis was achieved by decoding electrocorticographic signals recorded during overt speech production from cortical regions associated with articulation and phonation. The participant's significant impairments in articulation and phonation were addressed by focusing on a closed vocabulary of six keywords, which he could produce individually with high intelligibility.
Results and discussion The speech-synthesis BCI could effectively recreate the participant's speech during online decoding sessions. The synthesized speech was found to align well with the natural speech in timing, preserving important speech features, including phoneme and formant-specific information . Across three sessions, about five and a half months after training, the system was found to continue to perform consistently.
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