New AI-enabled system translates brain signals into speech

In a first, scientists have created an artificial intelligence (AI) based system that directly translates thoughts into intelligible, recognisable speech, an advance that may help people who cannot speak regain their ability to communicate with the outside world.

By monitoring someone's brain activity, the technology developed by researchers can reconstruct the words a person hears with unprecedented clarity. 
 
The breakthrough, which harnesses the power of speech synthesisers and artificial intelligence, could lead to new ways for computers to communicate directly with the brain. 


It also lays the groundwork for helping people who cannot speak, such as those living with as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or recovering from stroke, regain their ability to communicate with the outside world, researchers said.

"Our voices help connect us to our friends, family and the world around us, which is why losing the power of one's voice due to injury or disease is so devastating," said a researcher.


"With today's study, we have a potential way to restore that power. We've shown that, with the right technology, these people's thoughts could be decoded and understood by any listener," said  a principal investigator of the study.

Decades of research has shown that when people speak-or even imagine speaking-telltale patterns of activity appear in their brain. 

Distinct pattern of signals also emerge when we listen to someone speak, or imagine listening.
Experts, trying to record and decode these patterns, see a future in which thoughts need not remain hidden inside the brain-but instead could be translated into verbal speech at will.

However, accomplishing this feat has proven challenging. Early efforts to decode brain signals by researchers focused on simple computer models that analysed spectrograms, which are visual representations of sound frequencies.

However, because this approach has failed to produce anything resembling intelligible speech, the team turned instead to a vocoder, a computer algorithm that can synthesise speech after being trained on recordings of people talking.

"This is the same technology used by Amazon Echo and Apple Siri to give verbal responses to our questions," she said.

Researchers plan to test more complicated words and sentences next, and they want to run the same tests on brain signals emitted when a person speaks or imagines speaking. 

Ultimately, they hope their system could be part of an implant, similar to those worn by some epilepsy patients, that translates the wearer's thoughts directly into words. 

"In this scenario, if the wearer thinks 'I need a glass of water,' our system could take the brain signals generated by that thought, and turn them into synthesised, verbal speech," she said.

"This would be a game changer. It would give anyone who has lost their ability to speak, whether through injury or disease, the renewed chance to connect to the world around them," he said. 

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/       
                                                                                                                                                                      FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                  https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/           
                                                                           FOR CROCHET DESIGNS                                                                                                                                                                                                  https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com    

A New Antibiotic Could Help Prevent Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

Researchers have found that antibiotic minocycline can increase the lifespan of aged roundworms by preventing the build-up of proteins, revealing a protective mechanism that could be used to help prevent age-related neurodegenerative diseases in humans.

Protein aggregation has been known to cause several progressive age-related brain diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and prion disease.

The study, led by a team from the Scripps Research in the US, showed that minocycline prevents this build-up even in older animals with age-impaired stress-response pathways.

The number of proteins in a cell is balanced by the rate of protein manufacture and disposal, called proteostasis. As we age, proteostasis becomes impaired.

For the study, the team first tested 21 different molecules known to extend lifespan in young and old Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) worms.

They found that all of these molecules prolonged the lives of young worms; however, the only drug that worked on older worms was minocycline.

To find out why, they treated young and old worms with either water or minocycline and then measured two proteins called a-synuclein and amyloid-ß -- known to build up in Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, respectively.

It is because minocycline directly affects the protein-manufacturing machinery of the cell, known as the ribosome. This was true in worms as well as in mouse and human cells, the researchers said.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/                                                                                                                                                                             FOR INFO ABOUT KNEE REPLACEMENT, YOU CAN VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                                                             https:// kneereplacement-stickclub.blogspot.com/                                                                                       FOR CROCHET DESIGNS                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 https://gscrochetdesigns.blogspot.com