Scientists turn brain signals into speech, may help people who cannot talk

FILE PHOTO: A human brain is seen at the psychiatric hospital in Duffel, Belgium, July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People robbed of the ability to talk due to a stroke or another medical condition may soon have real hope of regaining a voice thanks to technology that harnesses brain activity to produce synthesized speech, researchers said on Wednesday.

Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, implanted electrodes into the brains of volunteers and decoded signals in cerebral speech centres to guide a computer-simulated version of their vocal tract - lips, jaw, tongue and larynx - to generate speech through a synthesizer.