The state of clinical trials of implantable Brain–Computer Interfaces

BCI Pioneer (and 2024 B-CRATOS Webinar participant) Ian Burkhart has recently co-authored a comprehensive review of clinical trials for implantable BCI in Nature Reviews Bioengineering!

Importantly, Ian and his co-authors not only review the history of BCI trials, but provide valuable insights regarding a pathway forward regarding patient ethics, a need for BCI standards, diversity in recruited volunteers, and other needs/barriers for progress.  The truly leave no stone unturned in covering everything from patient participants to research groups to technologies to the practicality of future clinical products.

And given Ian’s unique position as a former implantable BCI study participant, such perspective is invaluable for the field.  We expect this review to be a core resource for those wishing to better understand the history, present, and future of the field.

The review nicely compiles a list of emerging electrodes as of December 2023, and one notes the ever-growing number of data channels these devices aim to collect.  One can imagine that with multiple such devices implanted, we will see exponential increases in the amount and complexity of data collected in BCI of the future.   To take advantage of the full potential of such data, we will need next-generation wireless technologies capable of transmitting it for analysis and storage.  At B-CRATOS, we aim to develop such technologies to bring big data BCI systems to impactful real-world applications through improved integration within the body and to devices outside of it.  We also expect that by developing next-gen wireless technologies for implantable systems, patient acceptance, usability, and safety can be greatly improved over current systems.

Find the full article here!