Belgium

Even when the eyes stay fixed on one point, the brain tracks moving objects in a video, and that tracking grows stronger with attention. But researchers at KU Leuven found that EEG tracking of an object's motion weakens the farther the object sits from the fixation point, meaning decoding methods that read attention from tracking strength may mistake where an object is for where attention is.

Published in Journal of Neural Engineering on August 7, 2026, the study analyzed human electrocorticography data from four subjects to investigate medial wall contributions to finger movement decoding. Significantly above-chance finger movement detection was observed across multiple medial wall subregions, with local motor potentials and oscillatory power in the 8-12 Hz and 12-34 Hz bands contributing most strongly. Feature dynamics shared key properties with primary motor cortex, including pre-movement desynchronization, while also exhibiting region-specific positive or negative LMP modulations. Medial wall channels in two subjects enabled significant differentiation between individual fingers, and one subject showed decoding of both contralateral and ipsilateral finger movements, though this is a single case and preliminary.

The second annual Neurotech Leaders Forum drew executives, investors, researchers and regulators from Europe and the United States to imec's campus in Leuven, Belgium, on June 23-24, 2026, for sessions on clinical translation, capital formation, regulatory strategy and emerging frontiers. Thomas Stieglitz of the University of Freiburg gave the Day 1 keynote, arguing for perseverance and functionalist design, and later sessions covered women's health, European BCI ventures and the region's capital and regulatory challenges. Companies showing new work included WISE SpA, with its Heron spinal cord stimulation lead, and Melora Medical, with a transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) device for dermatology.

A Neuron paper describes Neuropixels Ultra, which packs 6,144 switchable recording sites at 6-micrometer center-to-center spacing while reading 384 channels simultaneously. In mouse visual cortex recordings, neuronal yield increased by more than twofold. The study also improved subcellular signal detection and cell-type classification, but it did not report simultaneous recording from 10,000 neurons.