Connect with us

Decoding Brain Signals into Written Text

Credit: yacobchuk/Getty/iStockphoto

Forget speech-to-text, we’re going brain-to-text.

Neuroscientists are working on a way to decode brain signals into written text. This would be a revolutionary invention that could help people with severe disabilities communicate in the future. Even though the technology is in its infancy stage, the results are extremely promising.

Currently, the program is set up to work only on certain sentences that it has been trained to read. Even so, this is a huge stepping stone in the ability to read a mind and comprehend what it wants to say. Doctors at the University of California in San Francisco were tasked with coming up with this new invention. The goal is to replace facial recognition by eye movements and twitches to pick up signals as to what a person is thinking.

Facebook has funded the project and wants to see a program developed that will allow users to have a conversation at the normal speed of human interaction. The study began when three patients were hospitalized for epilepsy and were about to undergo surgery. They all could speak normally and agreed to be tested by having electrodes trace their brain activity while being asked a set of nine questions and given a list of 24 responses that they could use.

With the recordings from the interactions, the neuroscientists were able to build computer models that matched the patterns of brain activity to the questions and the answers. With an over 60% accuracy reading, this was a strong first step in identifying how the brain reacts to certain questions. The neuroscientists said the vocabulary was very basic, but they believe a more sophisticated vocabulary can be implemented soon.

Moving forward, algorithms will need to be created that can translate brain signals into more varied speech on the go. They also have a goal of being able to read “imagined speech,” because right now signals are being sent from the movement of lips, tongue, jaw, and larynx, which obviously won’t work for people who are unable to move any of those body parts. Hopefully, this research can successfully give a voice to those who don’t have one.

Connect