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In recent years, scientists have developed technology that reads and interprets the complex brain signals that occur during our normal activities. It has even helped people with speech problems regain some of their communication skills. Until now, most of this work has consisted of translating partially voiced or imitated human language into words or sound. However, scientists at the Cal Institute of Technology seem to have broken new ground in this new field. a brain-machine interface (BMI) device that can translate internal speechat least at a primitive level.

The researchers recruited two people with spinal cord injuries to participate in their study. In both cases, electrodes were placed in the supramarginal gyrus, a brain region that previous research has shown is important for the formation of inner speech.

For three days, volunteers were taught to imagine pronouncing various existing words (battlefield, cowboy, python, spoon, swim and telephone) and two nonsense and completely made-up words (nifzig and bindi). At that time, their brains were monitored with devices.

The initial measurements were fed into a computer model that tried to decode and interpret the volunteers’ brain signals as they thought about saying the words in the next real-time session.

As predicted, researchers found unique brain activity in the supramarginal gyrus when volunteers thought about future conversationscompared to how it is pronounced supports the idea that it plays an important role in this process.

This work is a proof of concept for high-performance BMI intercom.
– the authors write in their articles.

Clearly, this research is just an early example of the potential of this technology. Given the significant difference between the two volunteers’ results, it’s clear that scientists still have a lot to learn about how our brains work to produce inner speech. And we are probably still a long way from using these devices to effectively translate the thoughts of a person who cannot communicate externally, such as people with locked space syndrome; This will be a particularly important practice for such people and their loved ones. ones.

Aside from medical applications, the ability to decipher the brain signals underlying inner speech and thoughts could lead to more radical possibilities in the future. For example, humanity can create interfaces that will enable remote communication. Therefore, the combination of different types of brain-machine technologies may one day make a form of mind reading possible.