Speech

In a crowd, background noise can make it hard to hear people talking. But soon we could be wearing headphones that use AI to filter out noise that’s more than a few feet away, creating a “sound bubble” that lets you focus on your own conversation.

Noisy environments pose a challenge to deaf people, particularly when they're trying to discern what a specific person within such a setting is saying. AirCaps glasses are designed to help, by providing real-time captioning to the wearer.

There could soon be a powerful new aid for people who are unable to speak. British scientists have developed a choker that detects its wearer's silently mouthed words, and converts them into audible synthetic speech.

A study has found that a six-week acupuncture treatment significantly improved language function, quality of life, and neurological impairment in people with speech difficulties following a stroke, with improvements maintained for six months.

Scientists have grown a tiny brain-like organoid out of human stem cells, hooked it up to a computer, and demonstrated its potential as a kind of organic machine learning chip, showing it can quickly pick up speech recognition and math predictions.

Sure, they're from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but words and phrases from Star Wars have taken on a life of their own in modern English. For the first time, a study reveals how deep-rooted offerings like "to the dark side" truly are.

Researchers have developed an implant that records brain signals to decode what people are trying to say. While still early days, the device may provide people who’ve lost speech due to neurodegenerative disease with the ability to communicate.

Researchers have developed a self-administered smartphone app to screen for Alzheimer’s disease by analyzing speech patterns. With subtle speech disturbances being an early indicator, this may be an easy way to obtain a diagnosis quicker.

Some people lack the power of speech, while others may find themselves in noisy settings where speaking voice commands out loud just won't work. Such folks might have use for the EchoSpeech glasses, which read their user's silently spoken words.

While some assistance is available to individuals who lack the power of speech, verbally communicating with other people can still be challenging. A new face-worn strain sensor could help, as it's able to "read" the wearer's silently mouthed words.

We’ve all been annoyed by someone taking a loud call in a quiet room, and now a Japanese tech company has unveiled a creative, if somewhat bizarre, solution. The Mutalk is a Bluetooth mouthpiece that “mutes” users who speak into it.

There's a belief that when someone loses one ability, another improves correspondingly. New research bears this out – in one scenario, at least – as it indicates that blind people remember spoken information better than their sighted counterparts.