Direct Access to Our Brains

Recent advances in neurotechnology including wearable brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), Neuralink implants, and AI-driven neural decoding are making it possible to translate brain activity into actions, speech, images and emotions, blurring the line between human cognition and digital systems. Devices ranging from MIT’s EEG-equipped glasses to Neuralink’s implanted chips demonstrate both the medical potential of BCIs and their growing commercial interest. These systems raise profound concerns: they can decode sensitive traits, track attention and emotion, and potentially manipulate mental states, opening possibilities for misuse by companies, governments or political actors.

As the neurotech industry rapidly expands, the risks of consumer devices collecting neural data with little regulation are becoming increasingly urgent. This growing capability has triggered global debates about neural privacy, cognitive liberty, and whether new neurorights are needed. Countries such as Chile and Spain, several U.S. states, and international bodies have begun exploring legal protections for identity, agency and mental privacy. Advocates argue that traditional human rights are insufficient for technologies that can read or alter neural processes, while others warn that proliferating new rights may cause legal confusion.

More information:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/magazine/neurotech-neuralink-rights-regulations.html

Simulation of How Brain Works

Researchers from the Allen Institute in Seattle, together with collaborators in Japan, have created a highly detailed supercomputer simulation of the mouse cortex. They modeled nearly 10 million neurons with 26 billion synapses on Japan’s Fugaku supercomputer. Their simulation captures not just the broad structure, but also sub-cellular details: each neuron is represented as a tree of multiple interacting compartments. The program, called Neulite, was able to simulate one second of real-time brain activity in about 32 seconds of computing time, only about 32x slower than a living mouse, which is remarkable for a model of this scale and complexity.

Although this achievement is a major technical milestone, the scientists emphasize that it’s still a long way from modeling a full and biologically realistic brain. Their current simulation lacks important features like plasticity (how neurons rewire themselves) and neuromodulators (molecules that change how neurons behave). It also doesn’t yet capture detailed sensory inputs. The long-term ambition, however, is to simulate an entire brain and not just the cortex. For reference, while the simulated cortex has about 10 million neurons, a full mouse brain would have around 70 million, and a human cortex alone contains around 21 billion neurons.

More information:

https://www.geekwire.com/2025/simulation-mouse-brain/

Invasive BCI Allow Paralyzed to Feel Objects

A pair of patients wearing a BCI was able to control a bionic arm and feel tactile edges, shapes, and curvatures along its fingers. For the study, the participants had BCIs implanted in the sensor and motor region of their brains responsible for hand and arm movement. The researchers were able to record and then decode all the patterns of electrical activity associated with the patient’s hand movement.

The patients were then asked to engage in a series of complex experiments controlling a nearby bionic arm to see if they could distinguish minute subtle changes occurring across its surface. They reported feelings and sensations like edges, curves, and directions moving across the hand. Researchers had to encode signals that would be associated with touch sensations and then send that to the patient’s brain.

More information:

https://www.popsci.com/technology/brain-implant-touch/

Prosthetic Hand Device Gives Thermal Feedback

Researchers have created a device that allows people with amputations to experience such natural temperature sensations using their prostheses. The team created the MiniTouch in which a temperature sensor was placed on someone’s prosthetic hand at the location the phantom thermal sensations seemed to arise from. When the sensor detected a change in temperature away from a baseline of 32C, it sent a signal to a temperature controller. This relayed the information to another component that was mounted on the upper part of the prosthesis and touched the skin of the arm.

The temperature that had been detected by the sensor was then reproduced on the arm at the trigger location for the phantom sensations. The device reproduced temperatures from 20C to 40C. The upshot is that the person perceived a thermal sensation in their missing hand, at the location of the temperature sensor. To test the MiniTouch, the researchers fitted it to the prosthesis of a 57-year-old whose right arm was amputated below the elbow. The team found when using the device Fabrizio could discriminate between identical-looking bottles containing cold, hot, or room-temperature water, with 100% accuracy.

More information:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/09/prosthetic-limb-device-enables-users-to-sense-temperature-difference

Mind Reading with AI Through Meta

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has made a groundbreaking development in BCIs. They have unveiled an AI system that can decode visual representations and even hear what someone is hearing by studying their brainwaves. These advancements in BCI technology have the potential to transform our relationship with artificial intelligence and its potential applications in healthcare, communication, and VR. The system utilizes magnetoencephalography (MEG), a non-invasive neuroimaging technique.

By capturing thousands of brain activity measurements per second, Meta’s AI consists of three key components: an image encoder, a brain encoder, and an image decoder. This approach allows the AI to develop a set of image representations, match MEG signals to these representations, and generate an image based on the brain’s responses. Although this technology is a remarkable advancement, researchers acknowledge the need for precision improvements, particularly in generating specific details.

More information:

https://medium.com/@affiliatemoneymaster2023/meta-just-achieved-mind-reading-with-ai-a-breakthrough-in-brain-computer-interface-technology-98cf7deb6858