突破性的研究：大脑信号被解码成书面文本

Doctors have been able to turn brain signals for speech into written sentences in a research project that aims to transform how patients with severe disabilities communicate.

在一项旨在改变严重残疾患者交流方式的研究项目中，医生们已经能够将大脑语言信号转化为书面句子。

The breakthrough is reportedly the first to show how the intention to utter specific words can be extracted from brain activity and converted quickly into text.

据报道，这一突破首次表明，如何从大脑活动中提取出特定词语的表达意图，并将其迅速转化为文本。

According to The Guardian, the brain-reading software only works with certain sentences that it can be trained on, although scientists believe a more powerful system could be created in the future.

据《卫报》报道，大脑阅读软件只能与特定的句子一起工作，而科学家们相信未来可能会创造出一个更强大的系统。

Doctors at the University of California hoped to create a product that could enable people living with paralysis to communicate more easily than existing devices, which pick up eye movements and muscle twitches to control a virtual keyboard, the British newspaper reports.

据英国报纸报道，加利福尼亚大学的医生们，希望研制出一种能使瘫痪患者比现有的设备更容易交流的产品，这种设备可以采集眼球运动和肌肉抽搐来控制虚拟键盘。

“To date, there is no speech prosthetic system that allows users to have interactions on the rapid timescale of a human conversation,” said Edward Chang, a neurosurgeon and lead researcher on the study.

该研究的首席研究员、神经外科医生Edward Chang说:“到目前为止，还没有一种语音假肢系统可以让使用者在人类交谈的快速时间范围内进行互动。”

Three epilepsy patients who were about to have neurosurgery for their condition all had a tiny patch of electrodes placed directly on the brain for a week to map the origins of their seizures, the researchers state in their study.

研究人员在他们的研究中称，三名癫痫患者即将接受神经外科手术，他们都将一小块电极直接放置在大脑上一周，以记录癫痫发作的起因。

While in the hospital, the patients reportedly allowed Chang to record their brain activity while each was asked nine questions and asked to read a list of 24 potential responses. Chang’s team then built computer models that matched the patterns of brain activity to the questions and the answers.

据报道，在医院里，患者允许张记录他们的大脑活动，同时每个人被问9个问题，并被要求阅读24个可能的回答。Chang的团队随后建立了计算机模型，使大脑活动模式与问题和答案相匹配。

“This is the first time this approach has been used to identify spoken words and phrases,” David Moses, a researcher on the team, told The Guardian. “It’s important to keep in mind that we achieved this using a very limited vocabulary, but in future studies, we hope to increase the flexibility as well as the accuracy of what we can translate.”

“这是第一次用这种方法来识别口语单词和短语，”研究小组成员大卫·摩西告诉《卫报》。“请注意，这次我们使用的词汇量非常有限，但在未来的研究中，我们希望增加翻译的灵活性和准确性。”

Their findings were published in the journal Nature and the work itself was funded by Facebook.

他们的研究结果发表在《自然》杂志上，这项研究本身是由Facebook资助的。