Maybe We Do Need Some Education

In Scientific American, writer Lucy Tu describes a project that may one day help people speak who have lost the ability to do so. That condition, called "aphasia," is often a side-effect of injuries to the brain. People with damaged vocal cords can have the same condition.

Eye-movement-detecting computer screens allow many people to communicate, as did the late physicist Stephen Hawking. People without full use of vocal cords might touch a vibrating wand to their throats while speaking to make external sounds. Both techniques can sound mechanical.

But researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have gone several steps ahead of even that advance.

The team, led by researcher Robert Knight, used the electrical impulses read from research subjects as they listened to "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1", from The Wall. The subjects wore electrodes in the study so the electrical activity in their brains could be measured for another experiment on epileptic seizures.

Knight's later experiment involved people wearing the electrodes while they were undergoing surgery and the song was played during the procedure. All of the data was fed to an AI trained to decipher them, so researchers had a record of how the brain reacted to "Part One." It could distinguish which brain response reacted to which music sound. A different pitch made a different electrical response. Changes in rhythm -- which in "Part One" happen quite subtly -- also change what the brain does and the electrodes read.

Then the researchers used another AI to take the brain signals and change them into musical notes. The result, Tu writes, was a "roughly intact" melody and "garbled but discernible" lyrics. If you already know what's being sung, then you would probably be able to pick out the words. Ironically, this is the same technique used by religious rock-haters when saying that a Led Zeppelin song backwards is an homage to Satan. Sort of.

Knight said the research is in early stages and may one day actually allow people to speak in a normal human voice. He said the team chose "Part One" because it's musically complex and can bring a lot of responses in brain activity. And they like Pink Floyd.

In fact, Knight says, they might soon be able to have enough data to create a whole Pink Floyd album. Which almost certainly will get them sued by Roger Waters.

PS - Yes, I know that the post title is actually taken from lyrics in "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2." All the lyrics in Part 1 deal with the wartime death of the singer's father. Didn't want to be that much of a downer.