Birds give brain voice

Scientists can predict what a bird is about to sing by reading the signals in its brain, creating hope they can produce words from human thoughts and restore speech to those who cannot talk.

Silicone electrodes implanted into brains of zebra finches allowed researchers from the University of California (UC) San Diego to track their neural activity while they sang.

A study published in the PLOS Computational Biology journal said that the same signal “has been used to study and decode human speech and other complex motor behaviours”.