Close-up of a participant’s face and neck with multiple electrodes attached using blue medical tape. The electrodes are connected to thin black wires, leading to a monitoring device, highlighting a scientific study on muscle or nerve activity.
Using electrodes, researchers record electromyographic signals from muscle movements in the face and convert these signals into natural-sounding speech. (Sasha Bakhter/UC Davis)

Restoring Voices—and Identity—with Neuroengineering

Decoding facial and muscle signals to restore authentic speech

  • by Douglas Fox

Lee Miller vividly recalls the day in 2021 when he met a woman who had lost the function of her vocal cords. In hoarse, whispering tones she explained how her voice had been instrumental to her vocation. Losing it, she said, undercut her life’s purpose. He had to listen carefully to hear her faint words, but the lesson “was really powerful.”

"Our voice is so important to our sense of identify and empowerment,” said Miller, who is a professor of neurobiology, physiology, and behavior in the College of Biological Sciences, a professor of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at the School of Medicine and Technical Director at the Center for Mind and Brain.

Now, Miller is working to restore original voices to those who have lost them – based partly on adapting technology for interpreting gestures and controlling robotic limbs. 

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