Paralyzed Man Speaks After 15 Years Using Brain Computer Interface

What was said

"He hadn't really spoken for about 15 years. He survived this injury. A lot of people who have that kind of stroke just don't survive. The way he actually communicates, because he has a little bit of residual neck movements, is that he improvised and had his friends basically put a stick attached to his baseball cap."

Dr. Eddie Chang described the first successful clinical trial of a speech neuroprosthetic on a man paralyzed for 15 years from brainstem stroke. The patient, unable to produce intelligible speech and communicating only by pecking letters with a head-mounted stick, had electrodes implanted over speech-controlling brain regions. After weeks of AI algorithm training, the system successfully decoded his attempted speech into words on screen, marking the first time someone paralyzed could generate sentences decoded directly from brain activity.