Weekly Signal: 34 | Speech BCIs, Craving Circuits, and Mental Privacy

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🧠 Weekly Signal

Neurotechnology News | November 15–21, 2025

Let's cut through the noise this week!

This week, we saw new clinical momentum in brain stimulation for addiction and invasive brain–computer interfaces for communication, while ethicists sharpened the public conversation around mental privacy and neural data. Meanwhile, industry doubled down on implanted hardware as a commercial bet. Bottom line: the neurotech stack is tightening from lab to clinic to law.

🧠 SCIENCE & CLINICAL TRIALS

🟢 Deep TMS 360™ trial targets alcohol use disorder

Published: November 17, 2025
Read more ➡️ Brainsway

BrainsWay announced a randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled clinical trial of its new Deep TMS 360™ protocol in adults with moderate to severe alcohol use disorder. The study will enroll participants at multiple sites to test whether a refined stimulation pattern can reduce heavy-drinking days and craving scores compared with sham over several weeks of treatment.

💡 Big Picture: This trial will clarify whether next-generation prefrontal/limbic deep TMS can move beyond depression into addiction treatment with clinically meaningful effect sizes.

💼 INDUSTRY & STARTUPS

🟢 Paradromics wins FDA IDE for speech BCI trial

Published: November 20, 2025
Read more ➡️ Nature / Paradromics

Paradromics received an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin its first in-human trial of the Connexus Direct Data Interface, an implantable brain–computer interface for people with severe paralysis and loss of speech. The early-feasibility study will assess safety, signal quality, and the ability to restore communication by decoding neural activity from cortical implants into digital output.

💡 Big Picture: Regulatory green-lighting of another fully implanted BCI system signals a maturing competitive landscape beyond Neuralink and sets up comparative data on safety, reliability, and functional communication gains.

🏛️ POLICY & ETHICS

🟢 Mental privacy debate sharpens around BCIs and AI

Published: November 19, 2025
Read more ➡️ The Verge / UNESCO

UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology, adopted earlier this month, officially entered into force on November 12, 2025 and became the centerpiece of global debate this week. Media coverage and policy commentary surged as the standard’s call for mental-privacy protections, neural-data safeguards, and restrictions on non-therapeutic neurotech use in children intersected with new U.S. concerns over commercial BCI and EEG companies selling “brain data.”

At the same time, U.S. senators sent a high-profile letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging scrutiny of consumer neurotech firms, arguing that current practices could violate emerging expectations around neural-data sensitivity—echoing the language found in UNESCO’s framework.

💡 Big Picture: The Recommendation is now functioning as a global reference point for neural-data governance. Its entry into force has triggered coordinated pressure on regulators to treat brain-derived data as a special category requiring explicit protections and enforceable consent standards.

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