Start-Up Spotlight: Synchron Hopes To Make Brain Interface A Reality Without Surgery

28 Nov 2019

• By Karyn Thomas

Synchron has high hopes that after successfully implanting the first minimally invasive neural brain-computer interface device in a human, it will eventually be able to give a "voice" to patients, including paralyzed individuals, who are unable to communicate. The company is conducting clinical trials and is hoping to use the data to apply for US FDA approval of the Stentrode device.

Synchron Inc., which was spun out of the University of Melbourne in Australia, made headlines in September when it announced that it had successfully implanted the first device in a human that can translate thoughts into text, giving a "voice" to people who cannot communicate due to paralysis or other conditions.

While communication through sensors from a patient's brain to a computer screen is not new, the Stentrode concept – a...