A 45-year-old man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has regained his ability to communicate through a pioneering brain implant.
The innovative device, developed by Blackrock Neurotech, has enabled the patient to speak at a rate of 32 words per minute, with remarkable accuracy.
The patient, who had lost his ability to speak due to the progressive neurological disease, was implanted with the text-to-speech brain implant in a revolutionary procedure.
The device records neural activity in areas of the brain associated with language and speech, using 256 intracortical electrodes.
According to researchers, the patient was able to communicate using a 125,000-word vocabulary just two days after the device was activated.
Transcripts of conversations reveal the patient's joy at being able to reconnect with loved ones.
"I have absolutely loved talking to my friends and family again," he said. "When my symptoms started, my daughter was only 2 months old, and now she is 5, and she doesn't remember what I sounded like before this disease took away my ability to talk normally."
Companies like Blackrock Neurotech, Medtronic, Synchron, and Elon Musk's Neuralink are racing to commercialize similar technologies.
However, researchers acknowledge that future efforts may need to interface with different brain regions to account for progressive atrophy in the brain caused by ALS.
