There's a lot to like about brain-computer interfaces, those sci-fi-sounding devices that jack into your skull and turn neural signals into software commands. Experimental BCIs help paralyzed people communicate, use the internet, and move prosthetic limbs. In recent years, the devices have even gone wireless. If mind-reading computers become part of everyday life, we'll need doctors to install the tiny electrodes and transmitters that make them work. So if you have steady hands and don't mind a little blood, being a BCI surgeon might be a job for you. Shahram Majidi, a neurosurgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, began operating in clinical trials for a BCI called the Stentrode in 2022.

A man with Lou Gehrig's disease, also known as ALS, is the 10th person to receive a brain chip that lets him take control of his life using just his mind. Mark, 67, was diagnosed in 2020 and has slowly lost his physical abilities like accessing his phone or feeding himself, but that soon to change after receiving Synchron brain-computer interface (BCI) last August. ALS is a disease that causes nerve cells to deteriorate and results in muscle weakness and reduced dexterity until the person is eventually paralyzed - the entire process can take two to five years, and there is no cure. Mark is now able to send health notifications or pain reports to his provider using just by the BIC reading his brainwaves and translating them into actions carried out on a computer. He will soon be able to use his thoughts for more exciting tasks like turning on Netflix and texting family and friends.

A 48-year-old patient in New York City who is unable to move and speak due to severe paralysis from ALS became the first to receive a permanent brain implant that could allow him to communicate telepathically - a milestone for Synchron, the startup behind the technology, which beat Elon Musk's Neuralink to the punch with its advance. The procedure took place July 6 at Mount Sinai West medical center in Manhattan, where a 1.5-inch long implant - a brain-computer interface (BCI) as a stentrode - made of wires and electrodes was implanted into the patient's brain without the need for cutting into their skull or damaging tissue. 'The first-in-human implant of an endovascular BCI in the U.S. is a major clinical milestone that opens up new possibilities for patients with paralysis,' said Dr. Tom Oxley, CEO & Founder of Synchron, in a statement. 'The first-in-human implant of an endovascular BCI in the U.S. is a major clinical milestone that opens up new possibilities for patients with paralysis,' said Dr. Tom Oxley, CEO & Founder of Synchron, in a statement. 'Our technology is for the millions of people who have lost the ability to use their hands to control digital devices.

Brain-computer interfaces have become a practical (if limited) reality in the US. Synchron says it has become the first in the country to implant a BCI in a human patient. Doctors in New York's Mount Sinai West implanted the company's Stentrode in the motor cortex of a participant in Synchron's COMMAND trial, which aims to gauge the usefulness and safety of BCIs for providing hands-free device control to people with severe paralysis. Ideally, technology like Stentrode will offer independence to people who want to email, text and otherwise handle digital tasks that others take for granted. Surgeons installed the implant using an endovascular procedure that avoids the intrusiveness of open-brain surgery by going through the jugular vein.

Elon Musk's Neuralink rival Synchron has begun human trials of its brain implant that lets the wearer control a computer using thought alone. The firm's Stentrode brain implant, about the size of a paperclip, will be implanted in six patients in New York and Pittsburgh who have severe paralysis. Stentrode will let patients control digital devices just by thinking and give them back the ability to perform daily tasks, including texting, emailing and shopping online. Although the implant has already been implanted and tested in Australian patients, the new clinical trial marks the first time it will be tested in the US. If successful, the Stentrode brain implant could be sold as a commercial product aimed at paralysis patients to regain their independence and quality of life.

A 62-year-old Australian man paralyzed following his diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) has become the first individual to send out a message on social media using a brain-computer interface, RT reported. Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are the next big thing in technology. While some people like Elon Musk want to use it to enhance human experiences as early as next year, others such as Synchron, whose interface helped Australian Philip O'Keefe send out his first tweet, want to develop it as a prosthesis for paralysis and treat other neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease in the future, the company said in a press release. Synchron's BCI works through its brain implant called Stentrode that does not require any brain surgery to be installed. Instead, the company leverages the intentional techniques that are commonly used to treat stroke to implant the Stentrode via the jugular vein, the press release said.

The Transform Technology Summits start October 13th with Low-Code/No Code: Enabling Enterprise Agility. Eight months in, 2021 has already become a record year in brain-computer interface (BCI) funding, tripling the $97 million raised in 2019. BCIs translate human brainwaves into machine-understandable commands, allowing people to operate a computer, for example, with their mind. Just during the last couple of weeks, Elon Musk's BCI company, Neuralink, announced a $205 million in Series C funding, with Paradromics, another BCI firm, announcing a $20 million Seed round a few days earlier. Almost at the same time, Neuralink competitor Synchron announced it has received the groundbreaking go-ahead from the FDA to run clinical trials for its flagship product, the Stentrode, with human patients. Even before this approval, Synchron's Stentrode was already undergoing clinical trials in Australia, with four patients having received the implant.

Elon Musk might be well positioned in space travel and electric vehicles, but the world's second-richest person is taking a backseat when it comes to a brain-computer interface (BCI). New York-based Synchron announced Wednesday that it has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin clinical trials of its Stentrode motor neuroprosthesis - a brain implant it is hoped could ultimately be used to cure paralysis. The FDA approved Synchron's Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) application, according to a release, paving the way for an early feasibility study of Stentrode to begin later this year at New York's Mount Sinai Hospital. New York-based Synchron announced Wednesday that it has received FDA approval to begin clinical trials of Stentrode, its brain-computer interface, beating Elon Musk's Neuralink to a crucial benchmark. The study will analyze the safety and efficacy of the device, smaller than a matchstick, in six patients with severe paralysis. Meanwhile, Musk has been touting Neuralink, his brain-implant startup, for several years--most recently showing a video of a monkey with the chip playing Pong using only signals from its brain.

The device sends weak electrical pulses into the brain to increase the efficiency of physical training. The product relies on the concept of neuro priming, i.e. using electrical stimulation to increase plasticity in the brain prior to an activity. According to the company, together with physical training, this results in increased strength, endurance, and muscle memory.

The hard part of connecting a gooey, thinking brain to a cold, one-ing and zero-ing computer is getting information through your thick skull--or mine, or anyone's. The whole point of a skull, after all, is keeping a brain safely separate from [waves hands at everything]. So if that brain isn't yours, the only way to tell what's going on inside it is inference. People make very educated guesses based on what that brain tells a body to do--like, if the body makes some noises that you can understand (that's speech) or moves around in a recognizable way. That's a problem for people trying to understand how the brain works, and an even bigger problem for people who because of injury or illness can't move or speak.