Researchers have developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) that has enabled a woman with severe paralysis from a brainstem stroke to speak through a digital avatar.
Researchers at UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley have developed a brain-computer interface that has enabled a woman with severe paralysis from a brainstem stroke to speak through a digital avatar.
"Our goal is to restore a full, embodied way of communicating, which is really the most natural way for us to talk with others," said Chang, who is a member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neuroscience and the Jeanne Robertson Distinguished Professor in Psychiatry."These advancements bring us much closer to making this a real solution for patients."
For weeks, the participant worked with the team to train the system's artificial intelligence algorithms to recognize her unique brain signals for speech. This involved repeating different phrases from a 1,024-word conversational vocabulary over and over again, until the computer recognized the brain activity patterns associated with the sounds.Rather than train the AI to recognize whole words, the researchers created a system that decodes words from phonemes.
To create the voice, the team devised an algorithm for synthesizing speech, which they personalized to sound like her voice before the injury, using a recording of her speaking at her wedding.
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