A group of scientists at the

University of Utah in Salt Lake City,

recently revealed that they may be really close to perfecting a machine

that helps translate brain signals into words, a significant
breakthrough that will allow

severely paralyzed people to be able to communicate their thoughts

clearly.

The technology, which is an extension of that developed to help
amputees obtain more control

over their prosthetic

limbs, involves placing microelectrode

grids right above the two speech centers of the brain - One above the

facial motor cortex,

the area which controls speech muscles of the mouth, lips,

tongue and face and the other, above Wernicke's

area, which scientists believe controls language
comprehension and

understanding.

A volunteer was asked to

repeatedly read 10 words like hungry, cold, hot,

hello, goodbye - common things that a
paralyzed

patient would want to communicate. Every time, he read a word, they

recorded the brain signal, observing that they were slightly different

in almost every case.

Now that they have proof of concept, the team is going to work on getting

the technology better - by probably increasing the size of the

electrodes, so that they can get better signals. They hope to have a

working prototype ready in a year or two. Pretty awesome, unless of

course the device falls into the wrong hands