Five years ago, Rodney Gorham agreed to something almost no one else had done: let surgeons thread a device through a blood vessel in his neck and into his brain. Today, the Melbourne resident is the longest-serving recipient of a Synchron brain-computer interface (BCI), and the data flowing from his home to researchers around the world is quietly reshaping what these devices can actually do.
Gorham was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Motor Neurone Disease) in 2016. Life expectancy after an ALS diagnosis is typically three to five years, though many people live considerably longer. Gorham has outlasted that window, and in doing so has become an irreplaceable long-term data source for a technology still finding its feet.
Unlike rivals such as Neuralink, which requires a craniotomy, Synchron's approach is endovascular: the device is delivered into the brain via a blood vessel sitting over the motor cortex, with its lead connected to a pacemaker-like unit implanted in the chest. That distinction matters enormously for patient safety and scalability. The implant, known as the Stentrode, wirelessly transmits decoded brain signals to external devices, enabling actions like "brain-click" typing at roughly 14 to 16 characters per minute.
In a video demonstration shown at an Nvidia conference in San Jose last year, Gorham demonstrated using his implant to play music from a smart speaker, turn on a fan, adjust his lights, activate an automatic pet feeder, and run a robotic vacuum in his home in Melbourne. These are small domestic acts for most people. For someone in Gorham's condition, they represent an order of independence that would otherwise be unimaginable.
Zafar Faraz, a field clinical engineer for Synchron, says Gorham directly contributed to the development of Switch Control, a new accessibility feature Apple announced last year that allows brain-computer interface users to control iPhones, iPads, and the Vision Pro with their thoughts. Synchron was the first BCI company to integrate Apple's BCI human interface device protocol, having co-developed a Bluetooth-based iOS protocol that connects brain activity directly to Apple devices using Switch Control, with no touch, voice, or eye-tracking required.
The experimentation has not stopped at consumer electronics. Gorham has played a computer game in which he had to grab blocks on a shelf; the game was tied to an actual robotic arm at the University of Melbourne, about six miles from his home, that remotely moved real blocks in a lab. Faraz visits Gorham at his Melbourne home twice a week to run sessions, troubleshoot the device, and document what is and is not achievable. "Rodney has been pushing the boundaries of what is possible," Faraz says.
Gorham, who was an IBM software salesman before his ALS diagnosis in 2016, has relished being such a central part of the technology's development, according to his wife Caroline. The fit between his professional background and his role as a de facto product tester is not lost on those around him. At the start of the trial, it took about two and a half seconds for Gorham's thoughts to prompt an on-screen click; that response time is now down to half a second.
The commercial stakes are rising. Synchron raised US$200 million in a Series D round in late 2025, with the funding directed at accelerating commercialisation of its first-generation Stentrode platform and advancing a next-generation, transcatheter, high-channel whole-brain interface. New investors in the round include Australia's National Reconstruction Fund, T.Rx Capital, the Qatar Investment Authority, K5 Global, Protocol Labs, and IQT. The Australian government's participation through the National Reconstruction Fund signals genuine national interest in seeing this technology reach the market.
The broader BCI sector is moving fast. Investment in BCI companies across 2024 and 2025 has surpassed $1 billion, with financing flowing to Blackrock Neurotech, Neuralink, and Precision Neuroscience alongside Synchron. Morgan Stanley has estimated the BCI market could represent a $400 billion opportunity. The question of who gets there first, and with a device safe and accessible enough for broad clinical use, is very much open.
Critics of the BCI sector raise legitimate concerns that go beyond technical performance. The advent of brain-computer interfaces raises existential and philosophical questions, particularly around privacy, and as one researcher has noted, those concerns can feel uncomfortable to raise given the obvious benefits to people living with serious disability. The prospect of insurance coverage is another pressure point. Whether insurers will cover an expensive device that requires surgery and carries a potentially limited lifespan remains unresolved. For patients with progressive diseases, that uncertainty is not abstract.
There are engineering limits, too. The software must be trained to recognise the brain signal for each individual user, because people's minds effectively "speak" in different ways, and Synchron founder Tom Oxley has described the need for a common neural language as one of the company's central challenges. The next phase of development involves moving the implant's AI from supervised to self-supervised learning, which Synchron says will make the device quicker, more precise, and more responsive, potentially enabling control of more complex operations.
The honest picture is one of genuine, hard-won progress sitting alongside genuine uncertainty. For those living with paralysis, the gap between where the technology is now and where it needs to be is not academic. For Gorham's wife Caroline, the value of even partial independence is not in dispute. The technology remains far from enabling real conversations, but it gives her husband much-needed autonomy, she says. The Synchron team, working alongside Gorham at his Melbourne home twice a week, is trying to close that gap one session at a time. The five-year mark is a milestone worth noting, but for the people who depend on what comes next, the work is nowhere near done. Further information on assistive technology options in Australia is available through the National Disability Insurance Scheme.