Nerve-tapping Neckband Allows 'Telepathic' Chat

ZonkerWilliam writes "Newscientist has an interesting article on tapping the nerve impulses going from the brain to the vocal chords, allowing for 'Voiceless' phone calls. "With careful training a person can send nerve signals to their vocal cords without making a sound. These signals are picked up by the neckband and relayed wirelessly to a computer that converts them into words spoken by a computerized voice." It's not quite telepathy, but it's pretty close."

Wireless, eh?

[Secret Rabbit (914973)]

Isn't there a reason why DefCon doesn't have wireless mic's at there event?

Telepathy

[the brown guy (1235418)]

" It's not quite telepathy, but it's pretty close." I though telepathy was when you could transmit or interpret one's thoughts. These guys are talking about interpreting what one is saying. I am way baked.

Ventriloquism

[nick_davison (217681)]

Speaking without moving your lips is generally ventriloquism, not telepathy.

Granted, telling off color jokes with disturbing old man/child connotations doesn't sound quite as cool as reading minds and joining the X-Men. Still, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck without moving its bill, it's still a ventriloquist duck and not a telepath.

Re:Ventriloquism

[jd (1658)]

Still, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck without moving its bill, it's still a ventriloquist duck

Keith and Orville [thebubbleburst.co.uk] are still touring?

Re:Ventriloquism

[thedrx (1139811)]

Ventriloquism is the ability to 'talk with your stomach'. I never saw any ventriloquist do their stuff over 1000s of miles, either.

Re:Ventriloquism

[DeadDecoy (877617)]

Yes but there's a big difference between ventriloquism and the content in the main post. In ventriloquism you're still vocalizing the words while giving the illusion that you're not. In this case you are not making vocal sounds but rather, sending neuron signals to a computer to do the talking for you. It's a hell of a lot closer to telepathy than you might think.

Re:Ventriloquism

[jamesh (87723)]

Still, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck without moving its bill, it's still a ventriloquist duck and not a telepath.

And I for one welcome our non-telepathic ventriloquist duck overlords.

Throat mikes?

[TubeSteak (669689)]

roughly transcribed by me:

"One of them, that we're developing is a usage scenario that we call 'the smartest man in the room'. We capture the activity that a person wants to say and translate that into speech and use that speech to query search engines."

Wouldn't a throat mic be easier to use? No specialized training required?

Re:Throat mikes?

[nacturation (646836)]

Wouldn't a throat mic be easier to use? No specialized training required?

Ability to use vocal chords required. Otherwise, Stephen Hawking would have been using one of those long ago.
 

Oh great

[Jafafa Hots (580169)]

"psychics" and televangelists will find a way to work this into their money making schemes.

Re:Oh great

[Jafafa Hots (580169)]

Yep. Just like how now that anyone can send email, nobody falls for Nigerian 419 scams, spam or phishing emails.

Great technology

[bondsbw (888959)]

Combine this with text-to-speech and wireless headphones, you have an effective non-vocal (and two-way) communication system that doesn't require the use of the hands or the knowledge of surrounding personnel.

The military uses, as well as civilian, are probably limitless. Of course, we're now one step closer to making it impossible to detect cheating on tests, and similar scenarios.

Re:Great technology

[sporkme (983186)]

Yes, this is absolutely amazing, and that a "backdoor hack" solution to the problem of "telepathic" communication and mobility is so promising is a testament to our ingenuity as a species. Great work! Please, though, let the commercial demand$ for entertainment and convenience devices $ubsidize the need for mobility and communication devices that disabled people need.

If you RTFA and watch a linked video, you will see a wheelchair controlled by thought. The the current iteration is rough and inaccurate, and the user must undergo training to the device, but I'd hope that the promise of provision and the simplicity of design in form and function will make this a real winner with further development. Reverse it: once the device can be trained to the user, we have a deployable thought-control system that uses our favorite external neural pathway, speech.

Accolades to the designers... I think we have a real winner here based on the proofs-of-concept, and with further development we will be better off is both convenience and humanitarianism.

Re:Great technology

[Hognoxious (631665)]

students will try to hide the neck band under their collar, but teachers will change the rules for attending exams so the device wont be so easy to hide. outside the exam room, a sign will be posted that reads:

T-shirts only. No turtlenecks allowed!

Headline from the year 2015: Research finally reveals reason for recent academic success by islamic girls.

Real Telepathy

[AKAImBatman (238306)]

Putting aside the "magic" aspect of telepathy that most SciFi authors seem to strive for, I have often considered how telepathy might look if it were a feature of a real species of creature. What I came up with is surprisingly realistic, though it lacks the charm of SciFi style telepathy.

The way I see it, telepathy is basically wireless communications. A species that "spoke" telepathically to one another in close proximity could use radio waves to communicate in an omnidirectional fashion. For high enough wavelengths, a nerve center acting as an antenna could be exposed from nearly any location on the body. (Possibly metallic in nature?) By modulating the frequency range used to "speak", a creature could become louder or quieter, effectively maintaining the type of privacy we humans enjoy with a whisper rather than a shout.

Of course, the disadvantage becomes immediately clear. There's no mind-reading involved. No cool body-takeovers, no telekinesis developing, nothing but a simple method of communication that is alien to us, yet accomplishes approximately the same task as human speech.

It's fun to think that "telepathy is the next stage of human evolution", but there are no obvious physics to support the SciFi interpretation of telepathy. (Especially when you get into telekinesis, which requires WAY more energy than the human body can produce!) What physics does allow us is slightly more boring, but none the less an interesting concept to explore. :-)

A 17 year old Sci Fi device from the book "Earth"

[Jim Ethanol (613572)]

This tech was described in a fair amount of detail in the 1990 book "Earth" [amazon.com] by David Brin.

Quote from Earth: "She took a subvocal input device from its rack and placed the attached sensors on her throat, jaw, and temples. A faint glitter in the display screens meant the machine was already tracking her eyes, noting by curvature of lens and angle of pupil the exact spot on which she focused at any moment.

She didn't have to speak aloud, only intend to. The subvocal read nerve signals, letting her enter words by just beginning to will them. It was much faster than any normal speech input device... and more cantankerous as well. Jen adjusted the sensitivity level so it wouldn't pick up each tiny tremor - a growing problem as her once athletic body turned wiry and inexact with age. Still, she vowed to hold onto this rare skill as long as possible."

Once again Sci Fi pwns reality...

The last thing the world needs...

[timmarhy (659436)]

.... is more opertunities for people to talk, because frankly the internet has shown my that people mostly talk shit.

What came out of the speaker

[Sinbios (852437)]

"Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all"?

This could seriously change some things

[zappepcs (820751)]

Walk into high school math class at 9:45, pop quiz says the teacher, reads the questions, pausing for 30 seconds after each one, computer whirring in the corner, at 10:05 the teacher announces "Well, since 6 of you failed today we are going to study xyz"

Once communication is set to bits and bytes things can go a lot faster. At least in some circumstances. Speed dating might get a whole new power setting from this and some vital sign stats.

I can see quite a few things changing radically when you don't have to the have the social clutter of one person talking at a time.

It's vocal cords, not vocal chords

[kurisuto (165784)]

"Chords" are in music. The structures in the larynx are "cords" as in rope.

Thank you!

[FlopEJoe (784551)]

Now, for the love of God, can you stop talking so loud on your cell phone at the airport? Nobody cares about your (probably pretend) business conversation and you don't have to talk so f'n LOUD!

Hawking

[PinkyGigglebrain (730753)]

I wonder if something like this could help Steve Hawking? His brain is still working but the nerves controlling his body have degenerated.

Re:this won't go over well

[glittalogik (837604)]

A blind date with a sexy voice and and a tracheotomy? Jackpot!

Re:Not even close

[sporkme (983186)]

Closest to ~telepathy~ we'll live to see... cynic. I won't be satisfied until I can actually communicate with my mind alone. Implants into my brain and straps on my neck do not qualify. Teach me to actually send my thoughts unaided! No, dammit, I don't want to use a tinfoil satellite dish! It is not telepathy unless my flesh can actually just broadcast my thoughts. That'll be the day...

Put down the weed, the dictionary and the Ray Bradbury! Don't dismiss a breakthrough just because it is not 80th century and is tagged as (not literal) telepathy. These guys have worked hard to develop a system that brilliantly answers a big question involving the transformation of thought to the physical world. Lower your cynic shield and watch the wheelchair video (linked in TFA). Have you even known a person with useless or missing legs? Arms? With this they could move about as freely as we "normies" do, utilizing simple vocal gestures. This is a major breakthrough, undeserving of lampooning.

--Not too sure about driving cars though. Or voting. Or intermarriage. Freaks.-- /sarcasm

Re:Not even close

[ceroklis (1083863)]

That's a ridiculous argument. If telepathy is a form of communication, the brain still needs to have an input where it receive the information from the other brain. How is this input different from a "sensory apparatus"? Your definition of telepathy implies its impossibility, and is thus useless.

Or perhaps you consider that a device taping to the cochlear nerve is not part of the brain. Then what if the device was installed inside the cranium, directly connected to neurons, would you call it telepathy now ? If not where is the boundary ?

If you insist that the "brain" in you definition is a non-modified human brain then the question is quickly settled: telepathy doesn't exist. Therefore debating whether something is or is not telepathy is pointless.