Machine Translates Thoughts Into Speech 93
An anonymous reader points to this explanation of a brain-machine interface for real-time synthetic speech production, which has been successfully tested in a 26-year-old patient. From the article: "Signals collected from an electrode in the speech motor cortex are amplified and sent wirelessly across the scalp as FM radio signals. The Neuralynx System amplifies, converts, and sorts the signals. The neural decoder then translates the signals into speech commands for the speech synthesizer."
Re:89% Success Rate! (Score:5, Informative)
English has about 20 vowels, but it only uses 5 or 6 letters to write them. This is part of the reason that non-native speakers find it hard to pronounce.
Only Volunteer Men (Score:3, Informative)
Translating your speech thoughts into speech by this machine requires implanting electrodes in your brain, wearing a large device stuck to your scalp, and then actually speaking (though this only reads your brain). If you do all that, the government can read your thoughts. Though the could read those speech thoughts with a microphone for a lot cheaper, and without your helping by going through all that surgery.
Re:Volunteer? (Score:2, Informative)