Two University alumni have developed a way to talk without speaking.

Michael Callahan, graduate student, and Thomas Coleman have developed a device that intercepts vocal neuron activity to communicate without speaking. By placing the device, which is three-fourths of an inch by three-fourths of an inch, on a person’s larynx, or voice box, it can recognize yes or no responses without mouth movement. Another person can hear the yes or no response through computer speakers and see it written on a computer screen. The device is connected to the computer, but it will be wireless by the end of this month. Callahan hopes the device will one day interpret a person’s entire vocabulary.

“It’s a huge goal,” Callahan said. “That’s what we’re kind of looking towards, and we think it’s something that is realizable.”

Callahan and Coleman created the company Ambient for their device. They filed Ambient to become an official company Oct. 27. It is filed as a social entrepreneurship, meaning its success is measured on the impact it has on someone’s life. Callahan wanted to establish a company by the age of 22. He turns 23 on Oct. 5.

At its current stage, the device has the possibility to help people affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, spinal cord injuries or other diseases and disorders that prevent physical and vocal communication.

“All of a sudden you get this disease, and before you know it you have no way of speaking, no way of communicating to anyone,” Callahan said. “That was a definite goal.”

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis damages nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, making movement difficult and eventually non-existent. People diagnosed with the disease start losing control of their feet, arms and mouth functions, such as swallowing, speaking and breathing. Each year approximately 5,600 people in the United States are diagnosed with the disease, most of them between the ages of 40 and 70, according to the official Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association Web site.

“You’re trapped within your body, but your mind is working properly,” said Bob Wessels in a telephone interview, executive director for the association in St. Louis, which covers Illinois south of Interstate 80. “It’s probably the saddest part of the disease.”

Spinal cord injuries can result in communication difficulties. Only people with complete injuries have no controllable functions below the point of injury. Spinal cord injuries affect 20 people out of a million and a relatively low number lose all communication skills, said Mercedes Rauen in a telephone interview, executive director of the Spinal Cord Association of Illinois.

Several devices exist that can help people without vocal abilities to communicate. People can use switches, alphabet boards or mouth-held devices with minimal functioning in different areas. For complete loss of muscle functioning, a hands-free computer mouse can be controlled by eye movement and blinking.

“Any device that can help someone communicate quicker makes a world of a difference to an ALS patient,” Wessels said.

In order to market the technology to a wider population, Callahan hopes to extend its capabilities to include cell phones. A person would be able to have a phone conversation without mouth movement. No one else in the room would hear the conversation. Callahan believes silent cell phone conversations would be used for privacy and for courtesy in quiet areas. He also hopes to be able to replace the computer keyboard through non-verbal vocal recognition.

Once Callahan and his partners realized their idea was marketable, helping people communicate became a motivation for development. The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago helped put a face on the problem for Callahan and before the end of this year it will provide patients to test the device.

The foundations for Ambient began in a Technical Entrepreneurship Center course when Callahan was an undergraduate at the University. Callahan and his partner David Osorio, senior in Engineering, wanted to create a device that would eliminate keyboards for computer input. Their business plan won the Cozad Business Plan Competition on campus. Callahan continued to register for classes that could help him develop their plan into a reality.

Callahan and Coleman created the device in a design course by placing it in a strap fastened around Coleman’s neck with the device’s electrodes on his larynx. Callahan received yes and no responses from the computer.

“Are elephants made out of trees?” Callahan asked

“No,” the computer responded. “No” was also written on the computer screen.

“Is the pope German?”

When Coleman did not know the answer, nothing happened.

The yes-or-no technology could allow people without functioning abilities to have input into their own lives, which they may not have now, Callahan said.

“We inch along and get the ability to distinguish more things that we can implement into helping these people,” he said.

For his thesis, Callahan is developing more software algorithms, or generalized procedures. Just as the term “ambient” refers to things going on in the background, Ambient’s technology tries to bring to the foreground what is present but unnoticed, Callahan said.