Casey Harrell, a 45-year-old man with the neurological disorder, which over time causes patients to lose the ability to walk, talk, chew and make other voluntary muscle movements, was able to communicate using a small vocabulary the day after doctors implanted electrode arrays in his brain as part of a study at the University of California, Davis. He was able to have full conversations within months, through words displayed on a screen and read aloud in a computer-generated voice designed to sound like his own. (The Logic)

Talking point: Scientists have worked for decades on brain-computer interfaces—devices that can, in effect, read people’s minds. Recent advances in artificial intelligence helped make this breakthrough possible, letting machine learning software process and interpret the huge amount of data from brain signals faster and more accurately. Harrell is not the first person with ALS to regain the ability to communicate through a brain chip. After receiving his implant in 2019, a 36-year-old German man soon asked for a beer.