“Marking a breakthrough in the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), a team of researchers from UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco has unlocked a way to restore naturalistic speech for people with severe paralysis.

This work solves the long-standing challenge of latency in speech neuroprostheses, the time lag between when a subject attempts to speak and when sound is produced. Using recent advances in artificial intelligence-based modeling, the researchers developed a streaming method that synthesizes brain signals into audible speech in near-real time…

According to study co-lead author Cheol Jun Cho, who is also a UC Berkeley Ph.D. student in electrical engineering and computer sciences, the neuroprosthesis works by sampling neural data from the motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls speech production, then uses AI to decode brain function into speech.”

From Berkeley Engineering.