Brain Computer Interface

Brain-Computer Interface Links Mind to Mixed Reality

An ALS patient performs spatial computing with a stent brain-computer interface.

Posted August 3, 2024 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

Source: Geralt/Pixabay

A recent breakthrough may disrupt the brain-computer interface (BCI), neurotechnology, spatial computing, and mixed/virtual reality industries. Last week, the BCI company Synchron showcased the world’s first-ever use of its BCI solution with the mixed-reality headset Apple Vision Pro by an amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patient.

“We’re building something that we think is going to be transformative technology capable of streaming direct thought for people through injury or disease have lost the capacity to move or speak,” said Tom Oxley, CEO and Founder of Synchron in a company video four years prior to this new milestone.

Artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning is accelerating the BCI industry, giving hope to those suffering from locked-in syndrome, neuromuscular disorders, paralysis, and more. The pattern-recognition capabilities of AI deep learning help predict the BCI user’s intended actions by decoding noisy brain activity data.

The term “brain-computer interface” was coined by the late computer science professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles Jacques Vidal, Ph.D., in his paper, “Toward Direct Brain-Computer Communication,” which was published in 1973 in the Annual Review of Biophysics. By 2030, the BCI industry is expected to reach $6.2 billion in revenue and grow at a compound annual growth rate of 17.5% from 2023 to 2030, according to Grand View Research.

What makes Synchron's BCI innovative is that it does not require brain surgery to implant because it is stent-based. Stents are small mesh tubes that are used for a variety of medical purposes, such as to keep blood vessels in the heart from narrowing, keep airways open, and even to deliver slow-release medication to help prevent the formation of blood clots. For this BCI, the stent with sensors is used to record brain activity.

Synchron has a BCI solution that uses a stent-electrode array equipped with 16 sensors to capture the brain’s motor signals. Instead of the massively invasive approach of opening the human skull to place a brain activity recording device in the brain, its neuroprosthesis, aptly called the Stentrode, uses a minimally invasive endovascular procedure to place a stent in the blood vessel located on the surface of the brain’s motor cortex. The stent is routed through the jugular vein in the neck in roughly two hours, bypassing the need for invasive brain surgery for implantation.

The stent is a self-expanding metal scaffold made of a nickel and titanium alloy called nitinol that is super elastic and can expand up to 8 millimeters in the blood vessel, according to founding CTO and Board Member of Synchron, Nicholas Opie, Ph.D., MBA, who is also a professorial fellow of medicine at The Royal Melbourne Hospital and professor at the University of Melbourne.

The brain signals captured by the stent-electrode array sensors are delivered along a lead to an implanted transmission device located below the collar bones in the chest. Brain activity is translated into user commands by the BCI harnessing the power of AI machine learning and is then sent to the external digital device. In this case, the external digital device is the Apple Vision Pro, a mixed-reality and spatial computing headset.

A 64-year-old ALS patient named Mark was able to use his thoughts to control a computer cursor. This enabled Mark to compose and send texts, select TV to watch, and play an immersive computer card game of Solitaire without using his hands in virtual reality.

At the union of the innovative technologies of AI, BCI, spatial computing, and medical devices, neurotechnology is advancing, heralding a new era in digital health and more powerful assistive technology in the future.