In practice, thanks to chips implanted in the brain and the use of artificial intelligence technology, patients who have lost their voices will be able to speak again. This was proven by researchers from the Universities of California, San Francisco and Berkeley, who developed a system based on advanced algorithms that enables a severely paralyzed woman to speak through a digital avatar.
This is another success for the team, which has been conducting similar experiments since 2019. – The goal is to restore the natural way of communication, and the progress we are making brings us closer to finding a real solution for patients – says research team member Edward Chang on the website Interesting Engineering.
Algorithms recognize brain signals
For the purposes of the study conducted this year. Zhang implanted 253 electrodes on the surface of the woman’s brain, which picked up brain signals and sent them to computers. The algorithms identified the brain signals responsible for speech and decoded the correct words. However, the team had to recreate the patient’s voice – for this purpose, they used a recording of her speech at the wedding and trained a special speech synthesis system on this basis. The engineers then created an animation of her face using her natural facial expressions and facial muscle movements. This is how the audio avatar was created.
