The man first lost his ability to speak after head trauma caused extensive bleeding into the pons area of his brain stem. BU researchers loaded him into a fMRI machine and asked him to attempt to produce specific vowels. After determining that his brain still worked regularly, they implanted an electrode directly onto its speech production parts.

The electrode itself is a marvel of science, containing neurotrophic factors which allow tissue to grown into and around it. While it sounds kind of gross, this stabilizes the electrode and allows it to reside long-term in the brain. It can only sense vowels right now, but the BU team is hoping that this type of technology will let mutes produce words directly in five years or so. [The Future of Things]

The bulbs will use the same diode for lighting the room and providing the network connection, flickering, as the Register put it, "like tremendously fast signal lights." Boston U is working on the project with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of New Mexico with a hefty $18.5m grant from the US National Science Foundation. The researchers see the concept and theoretically sound, but don't have full working models yet. [Smart Lighting ERC via The Register]