Michael Studdert-Kennedy, a psychologist at the Haskins Laboratory, in New Haven, Connecticut, and one of the most vigorous critics of the approach, argues that other studies have shown that the brain processes speech sounds completely differently from non-speech sounds, and that the hearing problem identified by Dr Merzenich's group thus has nothing to do with dyslexia.

ECONOMIST: The cat sat on the tam | The

The model also included a microphone which can monitor background noise and determine whether to amplify certain sounds - such as speech - to improve the listening experience.

BBC: shows off 'perceptive radio' that can alter scripts

An optical-character-recognition machine for the blind that's capable of reading most types of printed text aloud, the CCD flatbed scanner, speech-recognition software, the first synthesizer that created sounds virtually indistinguishable from those produced by their acoustic counterparts, and a whole bunch of other nifty things we can barely comprehend came from Ray's brain.

CNN: STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Computers invaded my life in 1985, when my mother, a master's student at UTEP, bought a RadioShack Tandy TRS-80 4P to pound out her thesis on the negative transfer of speech sounds from second to first language.

ENGADGET: Growing Up Geek: Christopher Trout Alt