A mind-reaching machine that can translate thoughts into speech is coming closer to reality.

The research has been ongoing for several years, and recently, scientists successfully managed to playback a word that someone is thinking by monitoring their brain activity.

While there remains a long way to go, they say this could help victims of stroke and others with speech paralysis to communicate with their loved ones.

Professor Robert Knight and his team at UC Berkeley have been studying how hearing words, speaking out loud and imagining words involves brain areas that overlap.

'Now, the challenge is to reproduce comprehensible speech from direct brain recordings done while a person imagines a word they would like to say,' said Knight, who is also the Founding Editor of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Knight says the goal of the device is to help people affected by motor disease such as paralysis and Lou Gehrig's Disease.

'There are many neurological disorders that limit speech despite patients being fully aware of what they want to say,' Knight said.