Paradromics said on September 14 that the first participant in its Connect-One study is producing speech in real time through the Connexus implant. She is a Michigan woman in her 60s with a progressive motor neuron disease and severe dysarthria. She answered open-ended questions and picked her own words rather than running a scripted task. Her first sentence: "Okay, I have a lot to say."
Connexus is a fully implanted intracortical interface that records at single-neuron resolution across hundreds of channels and sends data through intact skin to an external computer. FDA approved the IDE in November 2025. University of Michigan Health is the lead site. UC Davis Health and the Mass General Brigham Neuroscience Institute are also enrolling.
CEO Matt Angle put the claim narrowly: "She determines what she wants to say, and the system enables her to say it." The team is now comparing neural activity across listening, speech preparation, attempted speech and imagined speech to improve accuracy.
Open-ended, self-selected speech is a harder claim than decoding a fixed vocabulary, and it is the one that has to survive a pivotal trial with more than one participant. An early feasibility study of one is a signal, not evidence.