Breakthrough Brain-Computer Interface Is Minimally Invasive

High performance BCI takes less than 20 minutes to implant with new method.

Posted December 30, 2025 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.

An important milestone has been achieved in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. A new peer-reviewed study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering shows how a high-performance brain-computer interface can be rapidly implanted through a minimally invasive procedure.

“We have demonstrated that the entire surgical procedure for cranial micro-slit insertion, from initial skin incision to endoscope-guided array placement and final securing of the array positions, can be safely performed in under 20 minutes,” wrote corresponding author Benjamin Rapoport, MD, PhD, along with his team of neuroscientists at Precision Neuroscience .

Rapoport is a brain-computer interface pioneer, neurosurgeon, engineer, and one of the original eight Neuralink employees who co-founded Elon Musk’s BCI startup in 2016. Rapoport left Neuralink two years later. He is currently the Chief Science Officer of Precision Neuroscience who co-founded the company in 2021 along with Michael Mager and others, including former Neuralink employees.

Brain Computer Interfaces: Mind-Reading Tech

Brain computer interfaces are potentially life-changing technology that enable users to control external devices to perform daily tasks such as moving wheelchairs and robotic limbs, exoskeletons, synthesized speech, communications, email, texting, computing, and even electronic gaming. BCIs are assistive technology that offer hope to those suffering from neurodegenerative diseases and disorders such as ALS, Cerebral Palsy, Epilepsy, Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and locked-in syndrome, as well as those with spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries , paraplegia, quadriplegia (tetraplegia), and stroke survivors.

From a technology adoption curve perspective, the brain computer industry is somewhere between the innovators and early adopters and has a way to go before crossing the chasm to the pragmatists in the early majority. The worldwide brain-computer interface market size in 2025 of an estimated USD 2.4 billion is projected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 15.8% to reach USD 12 billion by 2035, according to analysis by Research and Markets.

Brain computer interfaces are mind-reading technology. The human brain is like a noisy information superhighway at any given moment. BCIs use artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning to help identify patterns in the massive amounts of complex brain activity data. BCIs decode user thoughts to predict the intended action typically after training and tuning the BCI.

For BCIs to work, they need a way to capture the brain activity of the user. Recording brain activity can be done invasively, noninvasively, or partially invasively. Invasive BCIs are implanted by a craniotomy, in which a neurosurgeon temporarily removes a piece from the skull to create a bone flap to reach deep into the brain to place a microelectrode array device. Noninvasive BCIs are typically wearables, which record brain activity often via EEG (Electroencephalography). Other forms of noninvasive brain activity recordings can be done by MRI (Magnetic resonance imaging) or MEG (Magnetoencephalography). Partially invasive BCIs are placed endovascularly. BCIs based on ECoG (electrocorticography) that place electrodes directly on the brain can be considered partial or fully invasive, depending on the device and implantation method.

A general rule of thumb is the more invasive the BCI, the higher the quality of brain activity recording and overall performance. Performance trade-offs are typically made with less invasive BCIs, and safety risks often are increased with more invasive implantation methods.

“Microelectrode arrays that penetrate the brain have facilitated high-spatial-resolution recordings for brain–computer interfaces, but at the cost of invasiveness and tissue damage that scale with the number of implanted electrodes,” wrote Rapoport along with co-authors Mark Hettick, Elton Ho, Adam Poole, Manuel Monge, Demetrios Papageorgiou, Kazutaka Takahashi, Morgan LaMarca, Daniel Trietsch, Kyle Reed, Mark Murphy, Stephanie Rider, Kate Gelman, Yoon Woo Byun, Joshua Miller, Timothy Hanson, Vanessa Tolosa, Sang-Ho Lee, Sanjay Bhatia, Peter Konrad, Michael Mager, and Craig Mermel.

For this landmark study, the researchers optimized the trade-off between performance and safety with their partially invasive solution. The neurosurgeons were able to place a thin, high performance 1,024 channel microelectrode array film safely in under 20 minutes via a minimally invasive cranial micro-slit technique. Their technique is significantly less invasive than other implantation methods.

“We report the feasibility of intraoperative use of the device in a five-patient pilot clinical study with anaesthetized and awake neurosurgical patients, characterizing the spatial scales at which sensorimotor activity and speech are represented at the cortical surface,” wrote the neuroscientists.

According to a company statement, during the time since the acceptance of their research transcript to its publication in the scientific journal, their high performance BCI device has earned U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for up to 30-days use and has been implanted in over 50 patients. The researchers are conducting longer-period BCI studies at six American medical centers, including Mount Sinai Health System, WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Penn Medicine.

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Cami Rosso writes about science, technology, innovation, and leadership.

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