Tsinghua’s latest official announcement:Brain-computer interface clinical trial, successful!Two coin-sized processors were implanted in the patient's skull and successfully collected nerve signals from the sensorimotor brain area. And after three months of rehabilitation training, the patient successfully achieved brain-controlled operations such as drinking water! So far, the first clinical trial of wireless minimally invasive brain-computer interface, led by Professor Hong Bo of Tsinghua Medical School and conducted at Xuanwu Hospital, has successfully achieved breakthrough progress.
According to reports, the second patient has also completed clinical trials and is undergoing rehabilitation training.
The first clinical trial of wireless minimally invasive brain-computer interface
Just the day before, Musk announced that the first human implant surgery had been successfully completed, and nerve impulse signals had been initially detected.
However, unlike Musk's Neuralink brain-computer interface, this brain-computer interface device emphasizes wireless minimally invasiveness.
The specific operation is to bury the internal machine in the skull and cover the brain's epidural electrodes with electrodes (the dura mater is located between the skull and the cerebral cortex and protects nerve tissue). This technology has been developed through long-term animal experiments and will not damage nerve tissue.
Patients can be discharged home 10 days after surgery.
When used at home, the external machine supplies power to the internal machine through the scalp, receives nerve signals from the brain, transmits them to a computer or mobile phone, and uses decoding algorithms to achieve brain-computer interface communication.
In addition, it also uses near-field wireless power supply and signal transmission, which requires no batteries in the body and can be used by patients for life.
Based on this technology, Xuanwu Hospital successfully completed its first clinical implantation trial on October 24 last year.
Finally, after three months of home-based brain-computer interface rehabilitation training, the patient used brain electrical activity to drive the pneumatic gloves to realize brain-controlled functions such as drinking water independently, and the grasp decoding accuracy exceeded 90%.
In addition, patients with spinal cord injury showed significant improvement in ASIA clinical scores and sensory evoked potential responses.
On January 29, the joint team held a clinical trial phase summary meeting and announced that the first patient's brain-computer interface rehabilitation had made breakthrough progress.
In addition, the second patient with spinal cord injury was successfully implanted at Tiantan Hospital in December last year. Currently, the signal reception is normal and the patient is undergoing rehabilitation training at home.
This clinical trial passed the ethical review of Xuanwu Hospital and Tiantan Hospital in April and May last year respectively, and completed the registration of international and domestic implantable medical device clinical trials.
From Tsinghua Brain Computer Interface Research Team
This breakthrough was led by the team of Professor Hong Bo of Tsinghua Medical School.
In 2021, he led the team in preclinical research on wireless minimally invasive brain-computer interfaces to achieve an equivalent information transmission rate of 20 bits/minute for each electrode, which exceeded the highest level of similar international brain-computer interfaces at that time.
His current scientific research focuses on the core laws of human brain network organization and information encoding, especially the network dynamic mechanisms of advanced cognitive functions such as language, and based on these discoveries, he develops new brain-computer interface technologies that directly interpret and regulate neural activity.
On the one hand, it provides new diagnosis and treatment solutions for diseases such as epilepsy and ALS, and on the other hand, it provides inspiration for new structures and new algorithms for language artificial intelligence.
Currently, he also serves as the deputy dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence of Tsinghua University and a researcher at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Tsinghua IDG.
According to reports, the software and hardware of the NEO system for this clinical application were developed in cooperation with Brighton Technology. The clinical cooperation units include Xuanwu Hospital and Tiantan Hospital.
Reference links:
[1]https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/info/1175/109595.htm
[2]https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/_cmyQb9CgksbT1CLPyOxYA