Kellis et al. (2010) experimented with severely-epileptic patients
that were going to have the seizure-stricken parts of their brain removed.
This operation requires that part of the skull is opened, and then
microelectrodes are installed on the surface to help narrow down the area
that needs to be removed. The researchers exploited this by putting microelectrodes
directly on to the Face-Motor Cortex and Wernicke’s area (highlighted
in figure 3.9) that are crucial for speech. Scientists matched the right
word, from a string of 10 words, to the corresponding EEG signal between 28
percent and 48 percent of the time, which is better than chance. This could
in the future make it possible for disabled people to communicate, using a
speech synthesizer to read the matched words out loud.