Brain-Machine Interface Could Give Voice to the Voiceless
From: Discover Magazine - 04/2014
By: Gordy Slack

A speech prosthetic could give voice to people who can't speak, by converting
their brain activity into words.

Mind reading usually conjures images of scam artists with crystal balls, but
a group of San Francisco neuroscientists and engineers is developing a device
that can do it sans crystal ball. Their research aims to figure out what
people with paralysis or brain injury are trying to say by studying how they
attempt to move their mouths. By decoding patterns in the part of the brain
that orchestrates the movement of the lips, tongue, jaw, and larynx, the
mechanical mind reader - a speech prosthetic - will give those with people
a voice through a computer-driven speech synthesizer.

Read the abstract at:
http://discovermagazine.com/2014/april/9-whats-on-your-mind

Links:
Edward Chang
http://neurosurgery.ucsf.edu/index.php/about_us_faculty_chang_edward.html
http://profiles.ucsf.edu/edward.chang

Center for Neural Engineering and Prosthetics
http://cnep-uc.org/wp/