Unscripted real-time speech from a high-channel implant

Paradromics — Connexus, Connect-One early feasibility study — The first participant implanted with Paradromics' Connexus BCI — a Michigan woman in her sixties with a progressive motor neuron disease — used it for unscripted, real-time speech and text. The distinction from earlier speech neuroprostheses is what she was doing: not copying researcher-selected phrases but choosing her own words, answering open questions, and talking to her grandchildren on a live phone call. Paradromics also reports separating neural signatures for attempted speech, where the person tries to produce sound, from imagined speech, where language is generated internally without any attempt — two different control signals from one implant. This is one participant in an FDA-IDE early feasibility study, and accuracy, vocabulary and durability figures have not been published.