Two brain-injured patients received the flexible brain-computer interface (BCI) device from Shanghai firm NeuroXess, which decodes one patient's precise movements and another's Chinese speech in real-time.
The patients used their minds to manipulate software, pick up things, speak to a digital avatar, and talk to an AI model.
In August 2024, NeuroXess and Shanghai's Huashan Hospital implanted a 256-channel, high-throughput, flexible BCI device into a 21-year-old epileptic woman's motor brain.
The researchers got electrocorticogram features from the patient's high-gamma band brain signals and built a neural network model to interpret and map brain function areas in real-time, just minutes after surgery and with a system delay of less than 60 milliseconds.
The patient could play table tennis and snake computer games without moving within two days of the operation.
After two weeks of training, the patient was able to utilize XessOS, a NeuroXess brain-computer operating system, to handle smartphone apps like WeChat and Taobao and smart home and intelligent wheelchair systems through brain control, improving her daily life.
A patient uses XessOS with BCI technology.
Another notable accomplishment of NeuroXess is the development of the world's first real-time Chinese decoding by high-throughput flexible BCI, which predates most of its competitors, including Elon Musk's Neuralink.
Chinese is one of the most complex languages in the world. It is a monosyllabic, tonal, and logographic language that differs significantly from alphabetic languages such as English. Its processing involves numerous brain zones, thus the BCI system has to cover all of them and collect enough data to grasp the information.
In December 2024, the collaborative team conducted the nation's first clinical trial of a high-throughput, flexible BCI for synthesizing Chinese speech.
The team collaborated with Huashan Hospital to implant the 256-channel BCI in an epileptic patient who had a tumor in the language area of the brain.
Within five days, the patient achieved 71 percent speech decoding accuracy using 142 typical Chinese syllables, with a single-character decoding delay of less than 100 milliseconds.
Real-time Chinese decoding.
Scientists and engineers are eager to bring BCI's groundbreaking technology into medical practice, ushering in a new era of therapeutic possibilities.
Shanghai's government said on Monday that it will approve a BCI industry cultivation action plant (2025-2030), promising to focus on cutting-edge difficulties and forming a consulting team with scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors to cultivate and organize BCI strategic initiatives.
BCI is currently a prominent topic around the world. Elon Musk claimed last year that his Neuralink company had implanted a BCI device in a human and that the patient had recovered well, with promising neuron spike detection.
A patient (left) uses BCI technology to command the robotic arms to perform the "blessing motion," following Tao Hu, the NeuroXess inventor.
How do NeuroXess BCI devices differ from others? Which patients benefit most from NeuroXess? What are its main benefits?
NeuroXess' products are 256-channel, high-throughput BCI devices. The company aims to use its BCI device to improve the lives of individuals with speech or motor function disabilities resulting from problems such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), epilepsy, paraplegia, and stroke to help them regain mobility and language and recover basic life ability.
What are the differences between NeuroXess' BCI products and Musk's Neuralink?
NeuroXess not only achieves the same goals as Neuralink, which can play games using brain commands, but it also performs a more essential function: it uses brain language.
Deciphering Chinese represents significant progress. The research on the human brain can be divided into four to five levels: the first is the decoding of the state and evaluation of emotions, the second is intention recognition and movement control, the third is language, which consists primarily of understanding and language generation, the fourth is visual reconstruction and enhancement, and the fifth is memory regulation and cognitive optimization.
NeuroXess is presently in the third level. Neuralink is second.
What is the difficulty in Chinese decoding?
Chinese is a tonal and graphic language based on monosyllabic characters, unlike alphabetic languages such as English. Information processing includes multiple brain regions.
Real-time Chinese decoding can assist people with language dysfunction in regaining their language capacity and the communication skills required for life. On the other hand, analogous technology in the West all decode English, which is inappropriate for Chinese patients. So the success of real-time Chinese decoding clinical trials has given Chinese patients hope.
What are the plans for the future?
Patients with brain-computer interfaces must wear headgear and drag power cords and data connections to link them to data processing machines. Wireless data transmission and charging will eliminate these connections in the company's next-generation products.
These two patients participated in a one-month technology verification clinical trial.
The company will continue to collaborate with Huashan Hospital and begin long-term clinical testing in 2025. It intends to obtain the certificate for implanted medical devices in three years.
How are the two patients in the trials doing?
Both are recuperating well. As short-term clinical trial volunteers, they have been disconnected from BCI devices and will be constantly monitored by the company to ensure BCI does not harm their physical and mental health.
Source: Shanghai Daily