COMMUNICATING BY THINKING, NOT TALKING

THOMAS OXLEY — CEO, SYNCHRON

In his practice as an interventional neurologist, Dr. Oxley has treated paralyzed stroke patients who were unable to communicate with loved ones and carers. A few years ago, he began working on the idea of bypassing speech and connecting his patients’ brains directly to a computer, so they could communicate merely by thinking. As founding CEO of Synchron, he helped develop a tiny device, called a Stentrode, that a surgeon snakes into the brain through the blood vessels, where it acts as a brain-computer interface.

Last year, two paralyzed patients in Australia used Stentrode implants to text and type words just by thinking about them. The implant converts signals from the patient’s neurons into commands, which are beamed wirelessly to a computer. The surgical procedure takes two hours and involves no cutting of the skull or sewing wires onto the brain’s surface. In July, Synchron got the green light from the FDA to start clinical trials. If all goes well, Synchron’s technology could help patients with neurological damage and paralysis communicate with family, share business ideas with colleagues, pay their bills—in short, to reclaim their lives. —M.G.