Although it’s still experimental, they hope the brain-computer interface could someday help give voice to those unable to speak. A new study described testing the device on a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who couldn’t speak for 18 years after a stroke. Doctors implanted it in her brain during surgery as part of a clinical trial.

The 'mind-reading' interface now mimics natural language instead of sounding like a piece of outdated text-to-speech software.