A new brain implant could significantly reshape how people interact with computers while offering new treatment possibilities for conditions such as epilepsy, spinal cord injury, ALS, stroke, and blindness. By creating a minimally invasive, high-throughput communication path to the brain, it has the potential to support seizure control and help restore motor, speech, and visual abilities.
The promise of this technology comes from its extremely small size paired with its ability to transmit data at very high speeds. Developed through a collaboration between Columbia University, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania, the device is a brain-computer interface (BCI) built around a single silicon chip. This chip forms a wireless, high-bandwidth link between the brain and external computers. The system is known as the Biological Interface System to Cortex (BISC).
A study published Dec. 8 in Nature Electronics outlines BISC's architecture, which includes the chip-based implant, a wearable "relay station," and the software needed to run the platform. "Most implantable systems are built around a canister of electronics that occupies enormous volumes of space inside the body," says Ken Shepard, Lau Family Professor of Electrical Engineering, professor of biomedical engineering, and professor of neurological sciences at Columbia University, who served as one of the senior authors and led the engineering work. "Our implant is a single integrated circuit chip that is so thin that it can slide into the space between the brain and the skull, resting on the brain like a piece of wet tissue paper."
Transforming the Cortex Into a High-Bandwidth Interface
Shepard worked closely with senior and co-corresponding author Andreas S. Tolias, PhD, professor at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford University and co-founding director of the Enigma Project. Tolias's extensive experience training AI systems on large-scale neural recordings, including those collected with BISC, helped the team analyze how well the implant could decode brain activity. "BISC turns the cortical surface into an effective portal, delivering high-bandwidth, minimally invasive read-write communication with AI and external devices," Tolias says. "Its single-chip scalability paves the way for adaptive neuroprosthetics and brain-AI interfaces to treat many neuropsychiatric disorders, such as epilepsy."
Dr. Brett Youngerman, assistant professor of neurological surgery at Columbia University and neurosurgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, served as the project's main clinical collaborator. "This high-resolution, high-data-throughput device has the potential to revolutionize the management of neurological conditions from epilepsy to paralysis," he says. Youngerman, Shepard, and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia epilepsy neurologist Dr. Catherine Schevon recently secured a National Institutes of Health grant to use BISC in treating drug-resistant epilepsy. "The key to effective brain-computer interface devices is to maximize the information flow to and from the brain, while making the device as minimally invasive in its surgical implantation as possible. BISC surpasses previous technology on both fronts," Youngerman adds.
"Semiconductor technology has made this possible, allowing the computing power of room-sized computers to now fit in your pocket," Shepard says. "We are now doing the same for medical implantables, allowing complex electronics to exist in the body while taking up almost no space."
Next-Generation BCI Engineering
BCIs function by connecting with the electrical signals used by neurons to communicate. Current medical-grade BCIs typically rely on multiple separate microelectronic components, such as amplifiers, data converters, and radio transmitters. These parts must be stored in a relatively large implanted canister, placed either by removing part of the skull or in another part of the body like the chest, with wires extending to the brain.
BISC is built differently. The entire system resides on a single complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit that has been thinned to 50 μm and occupies less than 1/1000th the volume of a standard implant. With a total size of about 3 mm3, the flexible chip can curve to match the brain's surface. This micro-electrocorticography (µECoG) device contains 65,536 electrodes, 1,024 recording channels, and 16,384 stimulation channels. Because the chip is produced using semiconductor industry manufacturing methods, it is suitable for large-scale production.
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