Man Speaks Again w/ Neuralink Brain Chip

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:01]Ow.

[00:00:04]The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plane.

[00:00:09]This man, Kenneth Shox, is now able to speak clearly thanks to his Neuralink brain chip. Kenneth has a horrible disease called ALS or motor neuron disease, which slowly destroys the body's nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement. Watch this. The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plane.

[00:00:39]Ow.

[00:00:41]The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plane.

[00:00:49]That's exactly what I said. Welcome to Neuro pod, a channel about Elon Musk's brain computer interface company Neuralink. My name is Ryan Tseng Kai, and in this video, I'm going to share how this technology works with comments on the latest Neuralink announcement.

[00:01:03]Kenneth is the 21st patient to receive the surgically implanted device and the second human trial participant in the voice study, which as you can see in the clinical trials.gov website, is used to evaluate the initial clinical safety and efficacy of the N1 or Neuralink first generation device and R1 systems device concept for the first generation surgical robot in providing an ability to communicate. And I want to highlight this first sentence in the inclusion criteria for the trial. Adults with diagnosis of ALS, PLS, stroke, or spinal cord injury who have severe speech impairment and impaired upper limb function. Kenneth was diagnosed with ALS in 2024 with his speech being progressively lost. He received the N1 implant in January 2026 at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. We just did our second voice participant surgery last week. Today will be our first day with BCI. We'll go in, show him how to use his charger, how to use his app, and we will guide him for some sentences to attempt to say, and we'll use that data to try to map neural intent to the actual words.

[00:02:13]Yes, this is it.

[00:02:17]Awesome they have that.

[00:02:20]So, when a user gets a brain-computer in your face, it's sometimes important for them to play around with their behavior to see what works best. What we did was Kenneth slowed down a little bit and tried to enunciate kind of the individual sounds of his sentence.

[00:02:36]And really like out of nowhere, we went from zero to 100 with the model. If you're at all interested in participating in any of Neuralink's trials in Arizona, Florida, Texas, Toronto, London, or Abu Dhabi, check out the patient registry at neuralink.com/trials.

[00:02:53]Neuralink surgery is invasive. But now that they've had some good practice in the lab, in rats, in pigs, sheep, monkeys, and dozens of humans, a lot of the initial risk is no longer present.

[00:03:03]The way this works is the surgeon shaves the patient's head and cuts open a hole in the skull that's the size of a quarter. Alongside the surgical robot, they expose the brain tissue, and the robot grabs these ultra-thin metal threads that are so thin that they become flexible. They peel them off and essentially sew them into the brain tissue. Fortunately, because this is all being done by a robot, they can be extremely precise and use cameras to image the brain and avoid puncturing all the blood vessels. For this voice trial, the implant is placed in the speech motor cortex region of the brain. So, although the actual threads and implant are basically the exact same for the paralyzed patients in the Prime trial, the sensors on these metal threads are detecting the electric voltage spikes from the neurons that correspond to what the patient wants to say. In other words, if their brain is telling their mouth, tongue, and larynx to say pickle or tarantula, you can steal that message and send it via Bluetooth to the computer for the AI to then say it for them.

[00:04:03]Hey.

[00:04:04]>> in. Hello. Nice to see you.

[00:04:06]Good >> Good morning.

[00:04:07]>> Come on in.

[00:04:09]Good morning, Kenneth.

[00:04:11]Good to see you.

[00:04:13]We're still in an early phase here, but Kenneth is helping us build the future.

[00:04:18]We'll start with some data collection just to collect some sentences.

[00:04:22]After that, we'll train some models and and get going.

[00:04:25]We'll do these at uh half speed with mouthing. I'm just continuing [music] that direction.

[00:04:37]>> [music] >> Siri, turn on lights in every room.

[00:04:44]I think this is awesome. The goal is like we want him to be able to simply just [music] intend to move his mouth and for our BCI to decode his speech.

[00:05:02]Yeah. There we go.

[00:05:04]I'm talking to you with my mind.

[00:05:08]Nice work.

[00:05:10]What was different there?

[00:05:12]And that the ease and in my head.

[00:05:15]Putting more effort in, more intention.

[00:05:18]It's modulating your neural signals more. Isn't it wild that within 1 month the Neuralink team was already able to make this progress through these three phases. To recap, the first phase is full vocalization where Kenneth completely moves his mouth and vocalizes the words as best as he can. The second phase is the mouth movements where he moves his mouth, but intentionally stays quiet. And then the third phase where it's just thinking about speaking. Now, future participants will be able to get their Neuralink implanted, recover, and calibrate for a few days, and then be speaking again with their loved ones immediately after. For some context, approximately 300,000 people live with the horrible disease of ALS. They won't all be helped by Neuralink, but if you just look at the expression of emotion on Kenneth's face and his wife's face, you can clearly see the positive impact this technology has. If Neuralink can scale that up to tens of thousands or 100,000 people helped, they'll have done more for the ALS community than any other technology. According to the US National Library of Medicine, ALS is strongly age-related. It is rare before age 40 with an average onset age of 60 years old. It's more common in men than women by a ratio of about 1.4 to 1.

[00:06:30]Around 95% of cases are sporadic with no clear family history. So, maybe there is 5 to 10% who have inherited genetic mutations, or the lifestyle factors within the family are just consistent enough through generations that it provokes the onset of the disease. But, this is not the only indication Neuralink's looking to include. Stroke is the most common cause of acquired speech loss. It can damage language centers, which would lead to difficulty producing or understanding speech, or damage motor pathways. There are approximately 100 million stroke survivors in the world, and roughly 1/3 of them have significant speech impairment. That means around 30 million people could have their lives completely changed with the Neuralink device. And I'm only talking about speech restoration. Seriously, just think about how crazy that is. Test it out. Go to a party. Go to a family gathering and don't speak. Now, do that every day for weeks. The test would show how lonely it can be when you can't participate in conversation. Having a voice means increased dignity and a sense of belonging, something I personally feel is one of the most important things a human needs.

[00:07:38]I am the very model of a modern major general.

[00:07:45]Neuralink has given us not only Ken's voice back, but it's really given us a boost. It's given us the chance for Ken to kind of be a pioneer.

[00:07:57]What excited me, they fired it up and he told me that he loved me.

[00:08:03]in OG Ken voice.

[00:08:06]So emotional for me to hear it the way I heard it on the phone all those years ago.

[00:08:12]Yeah.

[00:08:13]Something else.

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[00:08:53]Pre-order Link-A-Chart today by clicking the link in the description. Now, listen to this clip from Kenneth discussing the direct personal impact Neuralink has had on his outlook on life plus giving him a purpose. Neuralink has given me a purpose.

[00:09:10]We'll work together to make this thing better.

[00:09:16]Maybe I can't go anywhere, but I can participate in the meetings and then give feedback.

[00:09:26]It will give us back a voice.

[00:09:29]And the voice is a very important thing to have.

[00:09:35]It would be a total waste of life.

[00:09:39]Why didn't you all the good you really do?

[00:09:45]The Lord.

[00:09:49]The Lord turned out.

[00:09:52]Good be with the Lord.

[00:09:55]And that's number one reason I'm doing because I'm doing good others.

[00:10:05]And that is the best thing you want. You are the captain of your own ship.

[00:10:12]Make the most of what you're given in life.

[00:10:15]It's important to keep in mind that while this outcome has been incredible for Kenneth and probably will be for many others, this technology remains a medical device. It is not yet an FDA-approved consumer device. There are still risks from the brain surgery and ALS is still progressive and fatal.

[00:10:31]Specifically, Neuralink does not cure ALS. We still don't know for certain that the device will last for decades in the brain or that all brain data will be completely private. Now, I bring up these caveats because every week I have conversations with strangers who have either never heard of Neuralink or they only think of the technology as Elon Musk's brain chip implant. They have these real concerns. My response to them is their concerns are largely valid. The thing that gives me personal confidence is every team member I've met is passionate about making the device, the robot, the software as safe and secure as possible, which totally makes sense because who are the people that are most likely to want to join the Neuralink company in the first place? It's the people who have a close family member or friend who suffers from one of these diseases. They have real motivation to build the best product possible because that very product will be implanted in their mom, dad, uncle, daughter, grandparent, or lifelong friend. Also, I so often hear from these people who tell me they don't trust Elon or they don't think he he the morals they want leading a company like this. Then, as politely as possible, I basically get to saying, "Well, who would you rather have creating this? And who has the ability to create this?" And of course, it's not just Elon. Neuralink has more than 300 employees working day and night to make this progress as fast as possible.

[00:11:46]Highly talented Neuralink employees working at a company led by Elon Musk is exactly the group I'd want to create my brain chip implant. If you'd like to join that extremely talented team, even if you have zero prior experience working in the medical field, they are always looking for the best. Apply at neuralink.com/careers.

[00:12:05]Subscribe to Neuropod and watch this video to learn more about the latest Neuralink news. Thanks for watching.