POTENTIAL TELEPATHY?

IT'S NOT TELEPATHY, BUT IT IS NEAR TO BE

Telepathy: "Supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses."

If for some reason we were conscious but unable to speak, how would we communicate with the rest of the people? Recent research conducted at the University of San Francisco (UCSF), by Josh Chartier and Edward Chang, allows the generation of synthesized spoken language, from about 100 brain signals responsible for precisely coordinating the movements of lips, jaw, tongue and larynx, inducing our breathing to form words and sentences. Only the medium used (electricity) separates the definition of telepathy from what has been achieved. 5 volunteers who were being treated for epilepsy read phrases aloud, while a grid of 256 electrodes placed on the surface of their cerebral sensory motor cortices recorded and measured the resulting signals. Computational models based on these data allowed researchers to decode the way in which the patterns of activity of speech brain centers contributed to generate particular movements in their vocal tracts. Later, the simulated movements of the vocal tracts were transformed into sounds, generating intelligible synthesized speech. The sound patterns of the individual words synthesized from brain activity were very similar to those originally spoken. The model can also decode the acoustic differences between participating voices and can also do so even when the participants mouthed sentences. Now, enormous possibilities are open.