Columbia University researchers developed a postage stamp-sized silicon implant, called the BISC (Biological Interface System to Cortex), that reads brain signals and uses AI to decode them in real-time, allowing paralyzed individuals to control computers, send messages (like "emails"), and operate devices just by thinking, offering high-bandwidth, wireless brain-computer communication that's smaller, safer, and more powerful than previous methods.

"Most implantable systems are built around a canister of electronics that occupies enormous volumes of space inside the body," says Ken Shepard, who led the project’s engineering, and is Lau Family Professor of Electrical Engineering, professor of biomedical engineering, and professor of neurological sciences at Columbia University.

Shepard is on a team of researchers from the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science and Stanford’s Enigma Project whose remarkable new BCI – the Biological Interface System to Cortex (BISC) – may offer permanent liberation, reports New Atlas.

Brett Youngerman, a Columbia assistant professor of neurological surgery and primary clinical collaborator, believes that the BISC is a significant improvement for patients who require somatic relief that a BCI should be able to deliver.

“The key to effective brain-computer interface devices is to maximize the information flow to and from the brain,” says Youngerman, “while making the device as minimally invasive in its surgical implantation as possible. BISC surpasses previous technology on both fronts."

Related AI copilot Boosts Performance of Brain Implants

According to Youngerman, the paper-thin BISC can be inserted through a minimally invasive incision in the skull and slid directly onto the surface of the brain in the subdural space. Even better, the BISC has neither wires nor brain-penetrating electrodes, an improvement that reduces “tissue reactivity and signal degradation over time.

What, then, is the key to BISC's excellent design? BISC's future of mass production is made possible by semiconductors, a tried-and-true technology and manufacturing process.

"Semiconductor technology has made this possible,” says Shepard, because semiconductors allow miniaturization that shrinks the processing might of computers from the volume of multiple bank vaults to size of a single wallet. “We are now doing the same for medical implantables, allowing complex electronics to exist in the body while taking up almost no space."

The stamp-sized BISC can be implanted through a tiny incision in the skull because of its small size and thinness (despite including analog components for recording and stimulation, a wireless power circuit and power management, a radio transmitter, and digital control electronics). With a throughput of 100 Mbps, which is 100 times higher than any competing wireless BCI, its external relay station may link the BISC to any computer.

The BISC recognizes body movements, sensory data, brain states, and even intent by decoding high-bandwidth recordings using AI models. As Shepard explains, “By integrating everything on one piece of silicon, we've shown how brain interfaces can become smaller, safer, and dramatically more powerful.”