Brain-computer implant unlocks fluent speech for ALS patient at home
A brain-computer interface implanted in the speech motor cortex allowed an ALS patient who had been unable to speak for years to produce fluent, real-time speech at home. The system decodes neural signals into words with about 99% accuracy over a 125,000-word vocabulary at roughly 56 words per minute, and has been used for thousands of hours over a year with a privacy mode to control data recording. This shift from lab demonstrations to independent home use marks a major step toward practical speech restoration, though the technology remains invasive and experimental, not yet widely available, as the broader BCI field (including Neuralink and others) continues to tackle scalability, regulation, and access questions.
