Could brain implants read our thoughts? | Erin Kunz

Imagine what it’s like to lose your ability to speak. You know what you want to say, but the connection between your brain and the muscles that form words is no longer functioning. For people with conditions like ALS, or who experience a severe stroke, this is a devastating reality.

Today's guest is Erin Kunz, a postdoctoral researcher in the Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory at Stanford, who is part of a global community of scientists working towards the vision of a brain–computer interface — or BCI — to bypass those broken circuits and restore the ability to speak to people with paralysis.

We discuss how these BCIs work and the inspiring progress the tech has made in recent years, as well as the troubling question of whether a technology designed to decode what people intend to say from their brain activity could one day read out thoughts they never intended to communicate?

Learn More

• Study of promising speech-enabling interface offers hope for restoring communication (Stanford Medicine, 2025)
• For Some Patients, the ‘Inner Voice’ May Soon Be Audible (The New York Times, 2025)
• These brain implants speak your mind — even when you don't want to (NPR, 2025)
• A mind-reading brain implant that comes with password protection(Nature, 2025)
• How neural prosthetics could free minds trapped by brain injury(From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024)
• Brain implants, software guide speech-disabled person’s intended words to computer screen (Stanford Medicine, 2023)
• Software turns ‘mental handwriting’ into on-screen words, sentences (Stanford Medicine, 2021)

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