Overview
- Surgeons implanted four microelectrode arrays wired to skull pedestals in 2023 as part of the BrainGate2 trial to record activity from the speech motor cortex.
- The research team trained and upgraded decoding algorithms and caregiver workflows so the participant could be plugged in at home without researchers present.
- Monday’s Nature Medicine paper reports nearly 3,800 hours of home use over about 23 months, roughly 183,060 sentences and close to 2 million words, and an average communication speed of about 56 words per minute.
- The system converts attempted speech into text and offers cursor control, a privacy mode and user options such as a profanity filter, which the participant says restored work, family contact and daily interaction.
- Investigators call the recordings the largest single‑person single‑neuron dataset to date and say it will guide further development, but they caution the implant is invasive, remains investigational, and long‑term generalizability is unproven.