Neuralink Sets October 2025 for Clinical Trials of Speech Restoration Device

Neuralink, the company founded by Elon Musk, intends to start clinical trials in the USA in October 2025. This involves a device that can read speech signals directly from the brain and convert them into text, according to Bloomberg. The primary aim is to assist individuals with speech impairments, particularly after strokes or in cases of neurodegenerative diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

The company's president, DJ Seo, confirmed that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted permission to conduct this research. He stated that the technology will be able to capture what a person attempts to say or imagines saying.

"If you imagine saying something, we can capture that," said the president of Neuralink.

Currently, Neuralink is also conducting five clinical trials of implants that allow control of electronic devices, including computers and robotic prosthetics, using brain signals. However, there are currently no commercially available implants for direct speech reading from the brain.

The company is considering the possibility of deploying its device to healthy individuals by 2030, marking a step towards consumer technology development. According to Seo, users will be able to interact with large language models of artificial intelligence "at the speed of thought" and receive responses, for example, through headphones.

Similar technologies are already being tested by other research groups to restore speech in patients who retain the ability to think but cannot physically articulate words.

The start of the trials in October has been postponed from an earlier plan that aimed to begin implantation in the speech cortex by the end of September. In addition to speech restoration, Neuralink is exploring treatment possibilities for blindness and Parkinson's disease. By 2031, the company plans to implant devices in 20,000 people annually.