What is Artificial Intelligence?

It was in the news in mid-November 1999, a car accident left a 16-year old teenager totally paralyzed. Erick Ramsey could not move any part of his body; could not blink his eyes and could not even speak a single letter. He was a total wreck 10 years ago. But, now he is like a little child learning his first two words "mama" and "dada".

Thanks to neuroscience genius, Dr. Philip Kennedy, a pioneer in the field of brain-computer interface (BCI) research. He dedicated his expertise in order to develop a system that interprets Erik Ramsey's thoughts and translates them into speech. If successful, this would be the first brain-computer interface with the speech technology.

Several electrodes were connected directly into the boy's premotor cortex, a region of the brain that controls movement of the mouth, lips, tongue, and jaw. Kennedy developed a matrix of six words: heat, hid, hat, hut, hoot, and hot. that represented the major English vowel sounds. During the tests, he made Erik think of these words by saying in his mind the word uh-ee. As he does, a green cursor jumps across the matrix from hut to heat, and a sound booms out of the speaker "uuuhahuuuuhaheeeeeeee." That was the sound of Erik's brain, saying those words.Read more.

With Erick making a good progress in the BCI speech system, another scientist joined the project in 2006. Frank Guenther, a computational neuroscientist at Boston University, helped Kennedy develop a computer decoder that could turn those patterns into a prosthetic voice.

Click here to read more about Brain-Computer Speech Decoder, Erik Ramsey, Brain Implant, Neuroscience, and Prosthetic Voice

Read the full Erick Ramsey story.