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You don’t have to think about it: when you speak, your brain sends signals to your lips, tongue, jaw, and larynx, which work together to produce the intended sounds. 你可能从来没有想过：当你说话时，你的大脑会向你的嘴唇，舌头，下颚和喉部发出信号，它们共同产生你想要发出的声音。 Now scientists in San Francisco say they’ve tapped these brain signals to create a device capable of spitting out complete phrases, like “Don’t do Charlie’s dirty dishes” and “Critical equipment needs proper maintenance.” 现在旧金山的科学家们说，他们已经利用这些大脑信号来创造一种能够讲出完整短语的设备，例如“别动查理的脏盘子”和“关键设备需要合理的维护”。 The research is a step toward a system that would be able to help severely paralyzed people speak—and, maybe one day, consumer gadgets that let anyone send a text straight from the brain. 这项最新的研究成果解决了瘫痪和失语患者所面临的重大挑战，并可能是让他们恢复“说话”能力的重要一步。 A team led by neurosurgeon Edward Chang at the University of California, San Francisco, recorded from the brains of five people with epilepsy, who were already undergoing brain surgery, as they spoke from a list of 100 phrases. 由旧金山加利福尼亚大学的神经外科医生Edward Chang领导的一个小组记录了五名癫痫症患者的大脑，他们已经接受了脑部手术，研究人员让他们大声讲出100个短语。 When Chang’s team subsequently fed the signals to a computer model of the human vocal system, it generated synthesized speech that was about half intelligible. 当Chang的团队随后将信号馈送到装有人类声乐系统的计算机模型时，它所合成语音大约有一半可以被理解。 The effort doesn’t pick up on abstract thought, but instead listens for nerves firing as they tell your vocal organs to move. Previously, researchers have used such motor signals from other parts of the brain to control robotic arms. 这种努力并没有取决于抽象思维，而是在他们告诉你的声音器官移动时听取了神经的射击。以前，研究人员使用来自大脑其他部位的这种运动信号来控制机器人手臂。 “We are tapping into the parts of the brain that control these movements—we are trying to decode movements, rather than speech directly,” says Chang. “我们正在利用控制这些能够运动的大脑部分 - 我们试图解码运动，而不是直接说话，”Chang说。 In Chang’s experiment, the signals were recorded using a flexible pad of electrodes called an electrocorticography array, or ECoG, that rests on the brain’s surface. 在Chang的实验中，使用称为脑电图阵列（ECoG）的柔性电极垫记录信号，该电极放置在大脑表面。 To test how well the signals could be used to re-create what the patients had said, the researchers played the synthesized results to people hired on Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing site, who tried to transcribe them using a pool of possible words. Those listeners could understand about 50 to 70% of the words, on average. 为了测试这些信号可以用来重新创建患者所说的内容，研究人员将综合结果发布给了在众包网站Mechanical Turk上雇用的人，他们试图用一堆可能的单词来转录它们。那些听众平均可以理解大约50％到70％的单词。 “This is probably the best work being done in BCI [brain-computer interfaces] right now,” says Andrew Schwartz, a researcher on such technologies at the University of Pittsburgh. He says if researchers were to put probes within the brain tissue, not just overlying the brain, the accuracy could be far greater. “这可能是目前在BCI [脑机接口]中所做的最好的工作，”匹兹堡大学此类技术研究员Andrew Schwartz说。他说，如果研究人员将探针放在脑组织内，而不仅仅是覆盖大脑，那么准确性可能会更高。 Previous efforts have sought to reconstruct words or word sounds from brain signals. In January of this year, for example, researchers at Columbia University measured signals in the auditory part of the brain as subjects heard someone else speak the numbers 0 to 9. They were then able to determine what number had been heard. 以前的努力试图从脑信号重建单词或单词声音。例如，在今年1月，哥伦比亚大学的研究人员测量了大脑听觉部分的信号，因为受试者听到别人说出0到9号的数字。然后他们就能确定听到了什么号码。 Brain-computer interfaces are not yet advanced enough, nor simple enough, to assist people who are paralyzed, although that an objective of scientists. 尽管这是科学家的一个目标，但脑电脑界面还不够先进，也不够简单，无法帮助瘫痪的人。 Last year, another researcher at UCSF began recruiting people with ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, to receive ECoG implants. That study will attempt to synthesize speech, according to a description of the trial, as well as asking patients to control an exoskeleton supporting their arms. 去年，加州大学旧金山分校的另一位研究人员开始招募患有ALS或Lou Gehrig病的人接受ECoG植入。根据对试验的描述，该研究将尝试合成语言，并要求患者控制支撑其手臂的外骨骼。 Chang says his own system is not being tested in patients. And it remains unclear if it would work for people unable to move their mouth. The UCSF team says that their set-up didn’t work nearly as well when they asked speakers to silently mouth words instead of saying them aloud. Chang说他自己的系统没有在患者身上进行测试。目前尚不清楚它是否适用于无法用嘴巴说话人。加州大学旧金山分校的团队表示，当他们要求演讲者默默地说出口语而不是大声说出来时，整套装置几乎没有起作用。 Some Silicon Valley companies have said they hope to develop commercial thought-to-text brain readers. One of them, Facebook, says it is funding related research at UCSF “to demonstrate the first silent speech interface capable of typing 100 words per minute,” according to a spokesperson. 一些硅谷公司表示他们希望开发商业思想文本大脑读者。据其发言人称，其中之一，Facebook表示正在为加州大学旧金山分校的相关研究提供资金，“以展示第一个能够每分钟输入100个单词的无声语音界面”。 Facebook didn’t pay for the current study and UCSF declined to described what further research it's doing on behalf of the social media giant. But Facebook says it sees the implanted system is a step towards the type of consumer device it wants to create. Facebook没有为当前的研究付费，加州大学旧金山分校拒绝透露代表社交媒体巨头正在进行的进一步研究。但Facebook表示，它认为植入式系统是朝着它想要创造的消费者设备类型迈出的一步。 “This goal is well aligned with UCSF's mission to develop an implantable communications prosthesis for people who cannot speak – a mission we support. Facebook is not developing products that require implantable devices, but the research at UCSF may inform research into non-invasive technologies,” the company said. “这一目标与加州大学旧金山分校为不能说话的人开发植入式通讯假体的使命完全一致 - 我们支持这种使命。 Facebook不开发需要植入设备的产品，但加州大学旧金山分校的研究可能会为非侵入性技术的研究提供信息，“该公司表示。 Chang says he is “not aware” of any technology able to work from outside the brain, where the signals mix together and become difficult to read. Chang说，他“不知道”能够在大脑外工作的任何技术，信号混合在一起并变得难以阅读。 “The study that we did was involving people having neurosurgery. We are really not aware of currently available noninvasive technology that could allow you to do this from outside the head,” he says. “Believe me, if it did exist it would have profound medical applications.” “我们做的研究涉及有神经外科手术的人。我们真的不知道目前可用的非侵入性技术可以让你从头脑中做到这一点，“他说。 “相信我，如果它确实存在，它将有深刻的医学应用。” |
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