Brain implant allows mute man to speak

Scientists at Boston University in Massachusetts are working with a patient who has locked-in syndrome. It is a condition where the entire body is paralyzed. Patients with locked-in syndrome are only able to blink their eyes, but are fully conscience. They have implanted an electrode into the patient's brain to help synthesize vowel sounds. The researches believe that this could help similar patients produce whole sentences in the near future.

Frank Guenther and his team used fMRI(functional magnetic resonance imaging) to determine whether the man's brain could produce the same speech signals as a healthy person's. Once the device was implanted, the team used a computer model to decode the signals coming from the brain to help figure out which vowel sounds the patient was thinking about. "The long-term goal within five years is to have him use the speech brain–computer interface to produce words directly," Guenther says.

One positive aspect of this project is that the patient is more optimistic about life. He's really excited that he's able to try out this new technology that might one day allow him to communicate with his loved ones again. The next step is to train the computer to recognize consonant sounds so that the patient might one day be able to form complete words.


-Ricardo Raul Arteaga


http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081121/full/news.2008.1247.html?s=news_rss