Scientists Find Way To Let Silent People Speak With Their Thoughts

Scientists from Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the city’s Sourasky Medical Center-Ichilov Hospital have successfully developed a way to let silent people “speak” using only their thoughts. 

The study involved placing electrodes inside the brain of a person, who said two separate syllables aloud as his brain activity was recorded. 

The researchers then trained an AI model to recognize the brain activity connected to uttering the two specific syllables. Once that had been achieved, the AI model could identify the brain activity when the subject was merely thinking about saying the two syllables, and instruct a computer to replicate the sounds. 

The findings offer hope to people who are completely paralyzed due to a condition such as ALD, stroke or brain injury to be able to speak once again. 

The research was led by Dr. Ariel Tankus and Dr. Ido Strauss, both of whom work at TAU School of Medical and Health Sciences and Sourasky Medical Center.  

“In this experiment, for the first time in history, we were able to connect the parts of speech to the activity of individual cells from the regions of the brain from which we recorded,” said Tankus. 

“Our study is a significant step toward developing a brain-computer interface that can replace the brain’s control pathways for speech production, allowing completely paralyzed individuals to communicate voluntarily with their surroundings once again.”

The results of this study, which was supported by a grant from Israel’s Ministry of Innovation, Science and Technology, were published in the prestigious Neurosurgery journal, the official publication of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.