Virtual vocal tract creates speech from brain signals, a potential aid for ALS and stroke patients

“Speaking one’s mind” is getting literal: A device that detects electrical signals in the brain’s speech-producing regions created synthetic speech good enough for listeners to mostly understand complex sentences, University of California, San Francisco, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Listeners missed about 30 percent of the words in the synthetic speech, such as hearing “rabbit” when the computer said “rodent,” and misunderstood some sentences with uncommon words (“At twilight on the twelfth day we’ll have Chablis”) as comically as if they’d arrived via tin can and string. The synthetic speech was nevertheless clear enough to raise hopes that a brain-computer