Research Institutions

The Center for Neurotechnology listed nine new papers spanning experimental and computational neuroscience, neural interfaces and neuroethics. The selection includes Smart Dura for multimodal neural recording and modulation, work on transcutaneous spinal-stimulation trials, primate optogenetics, co-adaptive interfaces, motor-cortex activity and participatory neuroethics research.

Placing electrodes on the brain's surface rather than inserting them into tissue is the key difference between Precision Neuroscience's approach and the BrainGate approach Donoghue pioneered. The New York-based company develops minimally invasive, safely removable, high-bandwidth BCIs; its first system, Layer 7, is aimed at people with ALS, spinal cord injury and brainstem stroke, a population the company estimates at 315,000 in the US. The company says its Layer 7 cortical surface array has been implanted in nearly 100 patients at several leading academic medical centers, that it has raised $180 million from investors, and that it has received FDA 510(k) clearance. Donoghue, a professor emeritus at Brown University, will advise on device design, signal decoding and clinical strategy as the company pushes ahead with a long-term implant study and commercial launch.

Barcelona-based INBRAIN Neuroelectronics said it will work with Microsoft on AI for neurology and brain-computer interfaces, combining INBRAIN's neuroscience, bioelectronics and AI work with Microsoft's cloud and AI infrastructure. INBRAIN's graphene-based neural interface is being developed as an adjunctive therapy for Parkinson's disease; it received FDA breakthrough device designation in 2023 and entered its first-in-human study in the fall of 2025.

Researchers in the Department of Brain Sciences at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science developed BAMBI, a brain-computer interface that uses a head-mounted miniature microscope to image calcium signals from active neurons in real time and deliver feedback. Because it realigns to the same field of view in each session, it tracks the same group of neurons over multiple days without retraining. Tested in head-fixed and freely moving mice across different behavioral paradigms, the animals learned to stably modulate specific hippocampal neurons for rewards over several days.

Tongji Hospital in Wuhan announced a brain-computer interface research institute on 5 September 2025, which it says is the first of its kind run by a hospital in China rather than by a university or a company. The institute covers basic research, clinical application and commercialisation, with the stated aim of building a full-chain BCI system spanning prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation of neurological disease.