The University of California’s scientists created a computer program that turns brain signals into speech with the help of a brain-computer interface (BCI). The device works out what a person wants to say by encoding the movements of lips, tongue, jaw, larynx, and other vocal parts of the body to the computer which will then translate data into spoken words. This study was published in a scientific journal, Nature, on April 24, 2019.

The study worked with five volunteers with epileptic seizures. Scientists recorded the movements in the language-producing region of the volunteers’ brains as they read several hundred sentences aloud. The computer models will then translate the data into speech. Though the outcome of this study was successful, it will take years of further work before this technology is made available for patients’ use.