New human / computer interface technology allows people to talk without speaking

To detect these pre-speech patterns, electrodes are situated below the chin and pick up on the subtle movement of muscles normally used to make the sounds of speech. The information is then transmitted to a machine which deciphers what is being said with surprising accuracy. More tests are needed to perfect this device, but hope is on the horizon for stroke patients being able to regain their vocal communication skills with the aid of this technology.

• Soldiers and stroke victims might one day have something in common: a device that allows them to talk without speaking.
• As this ScienCentral News video reports, NASA engineers are developing technology that picks up and translates throat signals into words before they're even spoken.
• For people like Pinsker who find it hard to engage in conversation, a host of new technology awaits.
• "There's just been an explosion," says Stephen Cavallo, a speech-language pathologist and associate professor at Lehman College, where Pinsker frequents the Speech and Hearing Center.
• Now NASA researchers are taking a leap in the direction of deciphering speech.
• Neuroengineer Chuck Jorgensen told Discover Magazine that he's bypassing the physical body's normal requirements by delivering words via machine using subvocal speech.
• "When you're reading material...sometimes you find that your tongue or your lips are quietly moving but you're not making an audible sound," he explains.
• "And it's doing that because there's this electronic signal that's being sent to produce that speech but you're intercepting it so it doesn't really say it out loud.
• In a lab at NASA's Ames Research Center, electrodes similar to those used in a doctor's office cling below Jorgensen's chin and flank his Adam's apple, picking up electronic signals that the body sends to vocal chords.
• The net recognizes the pattern and the label---or word---that Jorgensen assigns to that pattern.
• When we're talking about something like vowels and consonants, we're still in the 70 percent range.
• For speech-language pathologists like Cavallo and patients like Pinsker, the real excitement is in the technology's potential to impact quality of life in people suffering from speech ailments.
• Instead, he offers to demonstrate what he knows it can already do: Before a wide screen, he maneuvers a simulated Mars Rover over Martian terrain.