Reading the Research: Thought-To-Speech

Today\’s article describes a really exciting potential breakthrough in assistive technology: thought-to-speech interfaces.  I\’ve seen various forms of this over the last few years, which is good.  I\’d actually theorized, back in college, that something similar could be done, but wasn\’t really in a place in my life where it was feasible to research it.  Essentially, the person is hooked up to a computer, which has been taught how to recognize the approximate \”sound\” of a word or number, in brainwaves.  You can thusly think a word, and have the computer say it for you.  

While this sounds like a fun party trick for most people, it\’s life-changing for people with cerebral palsy and epilepsy.  Nonspeaking autistic people, and those with difficulty forming words due to muscle control issues, might be able to harness this as well.  Instead of struggling to form words using their vocal cords, a person might don an apparatus (or have an implant installed) and simply make their smartphone talk for them.   We already have text-to-speech apps.  If the words could be inputted via thought, it\’s a very simple matter to have a program read the words aloud.  All without requiring the fine motor coordination to use a keyboard or some other specialized input system.

I was talking about this with a friend of mine, and he noted that such a thing would probably need some kind of push-to-talk option.  Otherwise the device is likely to try to translate random brain noise and or even thoughts not meant to be read aloud.  I\’m not 100% sure how big an issue that would be for everyone, due to differences in the way people think.

I\’ve noted before that I don\’t think in words, but rather some mixture of images, short video clips, sensations, and music.  I somehow don\’t think that\’ll translate into words very well.  At least not immediately.  Possibly someday we could picture something in our minds and have it show up on a screen.  Whole diagrams and such could be made much quicker that way.  I expect using such an interface would a skill in its own right.  Still, it\’d replace CAD software, and people train to use that.

Honestly, even as a person without speech impediments and physical disabilities, I\’d probably try to learn this software.  I actually can\’t stand to physically write my thoughts down on paper because of how long it takes to shape each word legibly.  I loved having access to a keyboard and word processing program because it allowed me to write my thoughts so much faster.  Imagine if I could simply write my blog posts as fast as I could think them!  It\’s a technology I\’d love to have.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn\’t get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)