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News

A decade in Nathan Copeland's brain: the Pitt ICMS safety paper lands

On 15 July 2026, Science Translational Medicine published a five-participant, ten-year safety study of intracortical microstimulation in the somatosensory cortex. The Pitt and University of Chicago team led by Robert Gaunt and Charles Greenspon delivered 168 million pulses across 27 combined years of implant time with no serious adverse events. The longest single participant is with very high confidence Nathan Copeland, first implanted on Star Wars Day 2015, still living publicly with the same Utah arrays eleven years later.

Jul 18, 2026 · 9 min read

Industry News

Keith Thomas can feel his dog: Feinstein's three-year double neural bypass lands in Nature Medicine

On 16 July 2026, Nature Medicine put on its cover a three-year follow-up of Keith Thomas of Massapequa, New York, who was implanted with five microelectrode arrays in March 2023 as the first participant in the Feinstein Institutes' 'double neural bypass' trial. The Chad Bouton team's paper reports that Thomas can now feed himself, drink from a cup, feel touch on his right wrist, and pet his dog Bow, with strength and sensation gains persisting more than two years after the stimulation was switched off.

Jul 18 · 11 min read

Market Moves

BrainCo unveils a brain-to-robot developer platform at WAIC 2026 in Shanghai

On Friday 17 July 2026, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, BrainCo debuted its Brain-Controlled Robot AI Platform, a graphical developer toolkit that pairs its non-invasive EEG headset with third-party humanoid, robotic-arm, and quadruped robots from Unitree, Realman, and Deep Robotics. Nyx He, partner and senior vice president, framed the launch as the next chapter of human-machine collaboration. Live demonstrations at the booth showed a person in an EEG headband directing a robotic arm to pick up a cup and an apple without buttons, voice, or muscle movement.

Jul 18 · 9 min read

Industry News

China performs first commercial Neuracle NEO implant

On Monday 13 July 2026, neurosurgeons at Huashan Hospital affiliated with Fudan University performed the first commercial implantation of Neuracle's NEO brain-computer interface in a male patient with tetraplegia from a decade-old cervical spinal cord injury. The device is coin-sized, epidural, battery-free, and drives a pneumatic glove for hand grasping. Neuracle NEO is the world's first commercial invasive brain-computer interface implant for motor restoration in paralysis, following NMPA Class III market approval on 13 March 2026.

Jul 16 · 10 min read

Market Moves

The BCI category is broadening beyond motor restoration in 2026

Across the first half of 2026 and the first weeks of the second half, three US Food and Drug Administration Breakthrough Device Designations were granted to non-motor-indication BCI and neuromodulation devices, Cortigent's existing Breakthrough-designated visual cortical prosthesis programme disclosed a secondary stroke motor rehab arm, three first-in-human or investigational-device clinical milestones landed, and two significant peer-reviewed publications extended the field's clinical use case. The motor-restoration pipeline itself continued to expand in the same window. This is a synthesis piece on what the data pattern actually shows and does not show.

Jul 13 · 13 min read

Policy & Regulation

Beijing Tiantan Hospital seeds Xizang's first plateau BCI centre at Lhasa People's Hospital

Xinhua reported on 9 July 2026 that Xizang (Tibet Autonomous Region)'s first plateau brain-computer interface clinical application centre was inaugurated at Lhasa People's Hospital. A medical assistance team from Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, introduced the non-invasive EEG-based BCI technology, which drives exoskeleton and robotic-arm actuators for motor rehabilitation. The centre sits within a six-year Tiantan-Lhasa department-support partnership dating to 2020, and targets cerebral haemorrhage, cerebral ischemia, TBI, spinal cord injury, and peripheral nerve injury indications.

Jul 10 · 6 min read

Market Moves

CNBC profiles BrainCo as the Hangzhou non-invasive BCI leader runs up to its Hong Kong IPO

CNBC published a video interview by China reporter Elaine Yu with Nyx He, Partner and Senior Vice President at BrainCo, on 10 July 2026. The interview lands six months after BrainCo confidentially filed for a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing on 12 January 2026 with CICC and UBS Group AG as arrangers, and six months after the company closed a ¥2 billion (approximately US$286 million) financing round co-led by IDG Capital and Walden International on 8 January 2026. BrainCo is one of Hangzhou's Six Little Dragons alongside DeepSeek, Unitree Robotics, Game Science, DEEP Robotics, and Manycore Tech.

Jul 10 · 7 min read

Market Moves

Paradromics hires Verily's former head of clinical neurology as Chief Clinical Officer

Paradromics announced on 7 July 2026 that William J. Marks, Jr., MD, MS-HCM, has joined as Chief Clinical Officer, a role distinct from the Chief Medical Officer position held by neurosurgeon Stephen Ryu. Marks was Head of Clinical Neurology and Head of Clinical Science at Verily Life Sciences from 2016 to 2023, before co-founding Nexus NeuroTech Ventures, which wound down 31 March 2026. The hire lands three weeks after Paradromics' first-in-human Connexus BCI implant at University of Michigan Health on 17 June 2026.

Jul 7 · 6 min read

Policy & Regulation

Beijing names Changfazhan its first BCI incubation platform under the Future Industry programme

Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology announced on 1 July 2026, with English release on 7 July, that the Changfazhan Brain Science and Brain-Computer Interface Incubation Platform in Changping district has been designated as one of seven newly recognised Future Industry Incubation Platforms, the first BCI-specific platform under that specific programme. Shanghai municipal science commission director Luo Dajin separately claimed on 6 July that Shanghai hosted nearly 60 per cent of China's BCI financing events, 40 per cent of the disclosed funding amount, and one-third of the country's BCI companies in the first half of 2026.

Jul 7 · 7 min read