Scientists have come up with a device that may revolutionize speech research: high-tech dentures that capture minute details of tongue movement in unprecedented detail.
Recording the movement of the human tongue during speech has been a 50-year-long uphill battle for researchers trying to better understand speech impediments. Devices put in the mouth to record tongue placement would often disrupt the speech itself, rethulting in flawed ecthperimenth.
“The tongue, like other human tissues, is a flabby body,” says Christophe Jeannin of the Institut de la Communication Parlée. Because it acts like a liquid and a solid—honey and rubber—at the same time, accurately capturing the physics of its motions is difficult. But by incorporating sensors into dentures at their laboratory near Grenoble, France, Jeannin and his colleagues have made it a snap to measure the tongue’s positions. The catch? It requires subjects who are toothless.
Jeannin installed dentures in 20 such volunteers ...
