How Scientists are Decoding Brain Activity to Help People Regain the Ability to Speak

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Researchers at UCSF have developed a digital avatar to convey the words and facial expressions of a woman with severe paralysis by transmitting her brain activity. They published their results a week after scientists at UC Berkeley announced that they successfully recreated music by recording the brain waves of patients while they listened to songs. We’ll talk with researchers on both projects about the rapidly developing advances in our ability to decode signals in the human brain and the promise of neuroprosthetics to help people regain the ability to speak. Guests: Robert Knight, professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, UC Berkeley Alex Silva, MD-PhD student of Medicine and Bioengineering, University of California San Francisco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for KQWED Podcasts comes from Landmark College, holding their annual summer
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0:28.6	From KQED.
0:31.6	You. From Kikudian San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. The brain, while still mysterious, is an information processing organ.
0:52.3	So in theory, researchers should be able to capture and decode the electrical signals
0:57.4	that neurons send to each other.
0:59.7	In practice, it's proven pretty difficult.
1:02.6	Brains are extremely complex and you have to physically access the brain.
1:07.2	Over the past several years, however, the technology has been coming along aided by new machine learning techniques.
1:13.0	And today we talk with two researchers who are working on brain implants that could let people who've lost their ability to communicate find a path back to language.
1:22.7	That's all coming up next. After this news.
1:35.3	Welcome to Forum.
1:36.7	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
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