Brain Tech Advances, the Power of Music, and a ‘Telepathy Tapes’ Critique (Spoken Roundup #21)

Welcome back to the Spoken Roundup! Each month, we highlight fascinating stories from the world of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technology and speech disabilities like aphasia.

Aphasia Awareness

The Aphasia Choir

We’ve covered many stories about aphasia choirs in the past, but it’s exciting to see a major podcast like NPR’s Consider This bring attention to the Aphasia Choir of Vermont. For those who don’t know, music is processed in a different part of the brain from speech, meaning people with aphasia can often sing even when they can’t speak. This bonus episode of Consider This introduces us to Anna King, who has lived with aphasia for 19 years after sustaining a traumatic brain injury. King shares the challenges of word-finding, the frustration of being misunderstood, and the joy of being able to express herself through song even when she can’t speak. With moments of humor, warmth, and reflection, this short episode highlights how community and creativity can bring connection, even when words don’t come easily.

First Was Lost and Now It’s Found

After suffering two cerebral hemorrhages in 2005, Scottish musician Edwyn Collins lost most of his speech. However, he went on to produce several comeback albums after finding that melody helps words flow even when speech fails. In a new interview, Collins and his wife/manager Grace Maxwell discuss the meaning behind his new song “Knowledge” and explain how aphasia rewired his creative process, forcing him to strip away excess and embrace a more direct, distilled, and emotionally raw approach to songwriting.

Technology and Communication

Improved Brain Decoder Holds Promise for Communication in People With Aphasia

We’ve covered several AAC projects experimenting with brain-computer interfaces in previous roundups, but UT Austin’s latest work marks another step forward. They have successfully reduced the training time for their AI-powered brain decoder from 16 hours to just one, which is a huge improvement since users have to lie motionless in an fMRI during the training process. Unlike the previous version, this system doesn’t require users to listen to any speech. Instead, it monitors their brain activity while they watch silent videos, like muted Pixar shorts. This new method may be another huge step forward for the project because preliminary research suggests that it works for aphasia patients who have trouble processing language just as well as anyone else. While one hour in an fMRI scanner just to communicate simple thoughts is still a long way from practical, it’s a clear sign of progress for this kind of technology. For full details on UT Austin’s new breakthrough, check out their article covering it.

Cerebellar tDCS Shows Potential for Improving Quality of Life in Post-Stroke Aphasia

A new study published in Nature explored the effects of cerebellar transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) in people with chronic post-stroke aphasia. Unlike many tDCS studies that target damaged language centers in the brain, this research focused on the right cerebellum, an area that remains largely intact after a left-hemisphere stroke (the kind that would lead to aphasia). Naturally, this did not improve language abilities, but participants reported notable gains in quality of life, particularly in psychosocial well-being, physical function, and energy levels. These findings suggest that stimulating the cerebellum may influence social, emotional, and motor processes in ways that could make recovery easier for aphasia patients.

Speech Spotlight

‘The Telepathy Tapes’: Autism Is Not a Superpower

You wouldn’t expect a site known for comic book coverage to publish a deep dive into the misuse of Facilitated Communication (FC), but AIPT Comics has long had a strong science section, and they recently published an article that’s just that. Moreover, author Janyce Boynton is a well-known advocate for debunking pseudoscientific AAC claims. In her critique of The Telepathy Tapes, Boynton unpacks how the popular podcast revives discredited FC techniques, falsely portraying nonspeaking autistic people as telepaths while failing to apply even basic scientific rigor to its claims. Although the podcast presents itself as an exploration of communication breakthroughs, its methods mirror debunked FC tests that rely on facilitator influence rather than independent communication. Boynton, a former FC facilitator turned whistleblower, acknowledges the desperation that leads parents to believe in such methods, but argues that real support for nonspeaking individuals should come from evidence-based AAC.

As always, thanks for reading! For more stories like these, be sure to check out the previous roundup!