Non-invasive electromyographic speech neuroprosthesis: a geometric perspective

Harshavardhana T Gowda, Lee M. Miller


Abstract
We present a neuromuscular speech interface that translates silently voiced articulations directly into text. We record surface electromyographic (EMG) signals from multiple articulatory sites on the face and neck as participants *silently* articulate speech, enabling direct EMG-to-text translation. Such an interface has the potential to restore communication for individuals who have lost the ability to produce intelligible speech due to laryngectomy, neuromuscular disease, stroke, or trauma-induced damage (e.g., radiotherapy toxicity) to the speech articulators. Prior work has largely focused on mapping EMG collected during *audible* articulation to time-aligned audio targets or transferring these targets to *silent* EMG recordings, which inherently requires audio and limits applicability to patients who can no longer speak. In contrast, we propose an efficient representation of high-dimensional EMG signals and demonstrate direct sequence-to-sequence EMG-to-text conversion at the phonemic level without relying on time-aligned audio.
Anthology ID:
2026.findings-acl.564
Volume:
Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026
Month:
July
Year:
2026
Address:
San Diego, California, United States
Editors:
Maria Liakata, Viviane P. Moreira, Jiajun Zhang, David Jurgens
Venue:
Findings
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
11636–11650
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/bulk-corrections-2026-07-02/2026.findings-acl.564/
DOI:
10.18653/v1/2026.findings-acl.564
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Harshavardhana T Gowda and Lee M. Miller. 2026. Non-invasive electromyographic speech neuroprosthesis: a geometric perspective. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: ACL 2026, pages 11636–11650, San Diego, California, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Non-invasive electromyographic speech neuroprosthesis: a geometric perspective (Gowda & Miller, Findings 2026)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/bulk-corrections-2026-07-02/2026.findings-acl.564.pdf
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 2026.findings-acl.564.checklist.pdf