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Episode details

Radio 4,1 min

Series Series 11

Speak:Unique - synthetic speech, authentic voice.

The Digital Human

Available for over a year

Euan MacDonald was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) in 2003. Together he and his father Donald established the Euan MacDonald Centre for MND research at the University of Edinburgh and later set up Speak:Unique. This is a research project that aims to develop personalised synthetic voices to help people with MND to sound like themselves when speaking becomes a challenge. Speak: Unique is currently running a small pilot study in the central belt of Scotland involving the use of voice donors. The patient鈥檚 voice is merged with that of the donor, who has been selected because they are the same age, sex and region, which means it feels more authentic to the patient. In this clip, Euan shares why retaining his own voice is so important.

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