A man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), who had virtually lost the ability to speak, was able to communicate again with the help of a Blackrock Neurotech brain implant, Reuters reports.

This is stated in one of two new studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In one study, a Blackrock Neurotech device was implanted in a 45-year-old man. He had a severe speech impairment and could only be understood by his caregiver.

The patient spoke very slowly, saying about seven words per minute. For comparison, the average speed of spoken English is about 160 words per minute.

Thanks to the implant, the situation changed. According to the researchers, the device allowed the man to speak at a speed of 32 words per minute. But it was not just the speed of speech that changed, but also the quality: only 2.5% of the attempts to pronounce words were misidentified.

As for the second study, its participant was a woman, also with ALS. She was implanted with a Medtronic device. It happened seven years ago, when she was 58 years old. The implant functioned well for six years. But over time, the effectiveness of the device decreased – this was not due to technical malfunctions, but to the progression of the disease.

Neurosurgeon Edward Chang of the University of California, San Francisco, believes that these studies provide “compelling new evidence of rapid progress toward clinically viable practical applications” of such devices to restore communication after paralysis.

Blackrock Neurotech, Medtronic, Synchron, and Elon Musk’s Neuralink are among the companies working to commercialize interfaces between the brain and computer. Neuralink has already implanted chips in two patients this year.