An instantaneous voice-synthesis neuroprosthesis

Maitreyee Wairagkar (), Nicholas S. Card, Tyler Singer-Clark, Xianda Hou, Carrina Iacobacci, Lee M. Miller, Leigh R. Hochberg, David M. Brandman () and Sergey D. Stavisky ()
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Maitreyee Wairagkar: University of California, Davis
Nicholas S. Card: University of California, Davis
Tyler Singer-Clark: University of California, Davis
Xianda Hou: University of California, Davis
Carrina Iacobacci: University of California, Davis
Lee M. Miller: University of California, Davis
Leigh R. Hochberg: Brown University
David M. Brandman: University of California, Davis
Sergey D. Stavisky: University of California, Davis

Nature, 2025, vol. 644, issue 8075, 145-152

Abstract: Abstract Brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to restore communication for people who have lost the ability to speak owing to a neurological disease or injury. BCIs have been used to translate the neural correlates of attempted speech into text1–3. However, text communication fails to capture the nuances of human speech, such as prosody and immediately hearing one’s own voice. Here we demonstrate a brain-to-voice neuroprosthesis that instantaneously synthesizes voice with closed-loop audio feedback by decoding neural activity from 256 microelectrodes implanted into the ventral precentral gyrus of a man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and severe dysarthria. We overcame the challenge of lacking ground-truth speech for training the neural decoder and were able to accurately synthesize his voice. Along with phonemic content, we were also able to decode paralinguistic features from intracortical activity, enabling the participant to modulate his BCI-synthesized voice in real time to change intonation and sing short melodies. These results demonstrate the feasibility of enabling people with paralysis to speak intelligibly and expressively through a BCI.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09127-3

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