Researchers believe they have found a technique to read human mind with the help of a computer program that may decode brain activity of the brain and put it into words. The technique could offer a lifeline for patients whose speech has been affected due to stroke or degenerative disease.
In novel study neuroscientists from the University of California Berkeley put electrodes inside the skull of brain surgery patients to monitor information from their temporal lobe. Temporal lobe is occupied in the processing of speech and images. When patient listened to speaking then a computer program analyzed how the brain processed and regenerated the words it had heard.
Researchers believe that new technique could also be used to interpret and describe what they were thinking of saying next. The new technique was tested in fifteen people who were already undergoing brain surgery to treat epilepsy or brain tumours. About two hundred and fifty-six electrodes were put on to the brain surface.
When they listened to men and women saying individual words including nouns, verbs and names, then a computer programme analyzed the activity from the electrodes, and reproduced the word they had heard or something very similar to it at the first attempt. There is already growing substantiation that perception and imagery may be pretty similar in the brain, stated study co-author Brian Pasley.
Consequently with more research brain recordings could allow researchers to synthesize the actual sound a person is thinking, or just write out the words with a type of interface device. Their study also shows in sharp relief how the auditory system breaks down sound into its individual frequencies, added Pasley.
This study mainly focused on lower-level acoustic characteristics of speech. The study was reported in the journal PLoS Biology. Robert Knight, professor of psychology and neuroscience, added this is huge for patients who have damage to their speech mechanisms because of a stroke or Lou Gehrig’s disease and they cannot speak. If you could eventually reconstruct imagined conversations from brain activity, thousands could benefit.