BCIwiki (bciwiki.com) — According to the PubMed record, a preprint posted on bioRxiv on October 1, 2026 proposes a functional atlas of the human central nervous system built from high-resolution surface electrophysiology recordings across patients, regions and behavioral tasks. The preprint has not undergone peer review. Its approach to a whole-brain interface aligns recordings within a common anatomical framework rather than recording the whole brain simultaneously with one device in one patient.
The study used recordings from the first 70 patients implanted with an anatomically conformal, thin-film neural interface. The interface was positioned at more than 100 locations, and the atlas comprises >100,000 electrode deployments. Targets span motor, sensory, language, auditory and associative domains, alongside brainstem and spinal cord structures. The deployment total is not a count of electrodes recording simultaneously.
Aggregated recordings showed digit representations ordered from lateral to medial, consistent with classical body maps, with transitions between adjacent representations occurring over approximately 0.8-2.0 mm. The researchers also observed movement-related beta-band suppression and focal high-gamma (70-200 Hz) increases during motor and speech behaviors. Task-modulated neural population dynamics appeared in evoked and spontaneous activity across cortical, brainstem and spinal cord regions. The authors interpret these findings as suggesting that fine-scale functional organization may be conserved across individuals after alignment to common anatomical landmarks.
Application demonstrations included real-time neural decoding from upper extremity motor cortex for real-time neuroprosthetic control. The researchers also decoded cortical correlates of spoken language, facial movements and complex emotional facial expressions from ventrolateral cortex. The authors describe the latter as initial feasibility evidence for interfaces combining verbal and nonverbal communication, rather than established long-term clinical benefit.