Speech is how we stay connected to those we love. It’s how we tell someone we’re in pain or uncomfortable, how we ask for a hand to hold, and how we simply say “I love you.”
For people living with ALS, brainstem stroke or other conditions that affect motor output used for speech, that connection can disappear while the mind stays fully intact. They know what they want to say, but the bridge between their thoughts and their voice is gone.
It often happens late in life, when patients are already medically fragile and the most important conversations are still ahead: with a spouse, with children, with grandchildren. Families are left reading faces and the squeeze of a hand, trying to reach someone they know so well.
Brain–computer interfaces have already shown that speech can be decoded directly from the brain. But today’s technology requires a craniotomy — open-skull surgery to place electrodes on or in the brain — and that is a risk frail and elderly patients cannot safely take. The people who need this technology most are the ones left behind.
NODES exists to change that. Our founders came to this problem from two sides: the clinical side of emergency medicine, where the need is impossible to ignore, and the engineering side, where small, wireless systems that avoid open-skull surgery are being developed. We’re building speech rehabilitation and neuroprosthesis technology gentle enough to offer to anyone, so more people can keep talking to the people they love.
