Scientists Have Developed a Brain Implant That Can Read People's Minds

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: The team at the University of California, San Francisco says the technology is 'exhilarating.' They add that their findings, published in the journal Nature, could help people when disease robs them of their ability to talk. The mind-reading technology works in two stages. First an electrode is implanted in the brain to pick up the electrical signals that maneuver the lips, tongue, voice box and jaw. Then powerful computing is used to simulate how the movements in the mouth and throat would form different sounds. This results in synthesized speech coming out of a 'virtual vocal tract.' 'The system is better with prolonged sounds like the 'sh' in ship than with abrupt sounds such as the 'buh' sound in 'books,'' the report adds. 'In experiments with five people, who read hundreds of sentences, listeners were able to discern what was being spoken up to 70% of the time when they were given a list of words to choose from.'

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