full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Miguel Nicolelis: A monkey that controls a robot with its thoughts. No, really.

Unscramble the Blue Letters

And what we did bicllaasy was to train the animals to learn how to control these avatars and explore objects that appear in the virtual world. And these objects are visually identical, but when the avatar crosses the surface of these objects, they send an electrical message that is prootopniral to the microtactile texture of the object that goes back directly to the monkey's brain, irfionnmg the brain what it is the avatar is tuiohcng. And in just four weeks, the brain learns to process this new sensation and acquires a new sensory pathway — like a new sense. And you truly liberate the brain now because you are ailonlwg the brain to send mootr commands to move this avatar. And the feedback that comes from the avatar is being peesoscrd directly by the barin without the interference of the skin.

Open Cloze

And what we did _________ was to train the animals to learn how to control these avatars and explore objects that appear in the virtual world. And these objects are visually identical, but when the avatar crosses the surface of these objects, they send an electrical message that is ____________ to the microtactile texture of the object that goes back directly to the monkey's brain, _________ the brain what it is the avatar is ________. And in just four weeks, the brain learns to process this new sensation and acquires a new sensory pathway — like a new sense. And you truly liberate the brain now because you are ________ the brain to send _____ commands to move this avatar. And the feedback that comes from the avatar is being _________ directly by the _____ without the interference of the skin.

Solution

  1. processed
  2. brain
  3. touching
  4. informing
  5. allowing
  6. motor
  7. basically
  8. proportional

Original Text

And what we did basically was to train the animals to learn how to control these avatars and explore objects that appear in the virtual world. And these objects are visually identical, but when the avatar crosses the surface of these objects, they send an electrical message that is proportional to the microtactile texture of the object that goes back directly to the monkey's brain, informing the brain what it is the avatar is touching. And in just four weeks, the brain learns to process this new sensation and acquires a new sensory pathway — like a new sense. And you truly liberate the brain now because you are allowing the brain to send motor commands to move this avatar. And the feedback that comes from the avatar is being processed directly by the brain without the interference of the skin.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
brain activity 5
orange juice 4
artificial device 3
brain cells 2
human nature 2
brazilian orange 2
robotic arm 2
robotic device 2
virtual world 2
electrical message 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
brazilian orange juice 2

Important Words

  1. acquires
  2. allowing
  3. animals
  4. avatar
  5. avatars
  6. basically
  7. brain
  8. commands
  9. control
  10. crosses
  11. electrical
  12. explore
  13. feedback
  14. identical
  15. informing
  16. interference
  17. learn
  18. learns
  19. liberate
  20. message
  21. microtactile
  22. motor
  23. move
  24. object
  25. objects
  26. pathway
  27. process
  28. processed
  29. proportional
  30. send
  31. sensation
  32. sense
  33. sensory
  34. skin
  35. surface
  36. texture
  37. touching
  38. train
  39. virtual
  40. visually
  41. weeks
  42. world