How long can a speech implant keep working once it is in? · Grey Matter

Years, as far as anyone has measured.

How long can a speech implant keep working once it is in?

Years, as far as anyone has measured. A man with ALS used four Utah arrays for speech nearly every day for almost two years at home, more than 3,800 hours, and Utah arrays in other people have recorded for over eight years, although each needle slowly loses neurons as scar tissue forms around it. In ALS the limit can also be the disease: a surface implant used for almost seven years faded after the sixth, as the cortex under it shrank, while the hardware kept working.