Brain implant that powers Apple and Amazon devices reaches new milestone
We can now add the Apple Vision Pro and Amazon Alexa-powered smart home devices to the growing list of technology that people can control with their thoughts, thanks to a brain implant called Stentrode. The implant, made by Synchron, is designed to allow patients with paralysis to control their digital devices using signals from their brains.
Mark uses Synchron’s BCI to control Apple Vision Pro.
In a new milestone, the company announced the results of its latest research on Monday at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The study followed six patients with Synchron’s brain implant for a period of 12 months and concluded that no serious side effects (i.e. medical complications such as blood clots or stroke) related to the Stentrode were reported.
The success of this latest trial means that Synchron will move on to a larger study with more participants. Tom Oxley, founder of Synchron, says this next chapter in the Stentrode’s development will be about reliability, collecting more brain data and using that data to make the device more powerful, more intuitive to work with and more capable for its users to make.
The Stentrode resides in a blood vessel near the motor cortex of the brain, where it senses the user’s intention to move and wirelessly transmits it to perform the desired action on their digital device.
“How do you turn the device on and off with your brain? What if you dream? How do you lock it?” says Oxley. ‘We take these simple things for granted [and] have solutions because we use our hands, need to be solved for BCI.”
There is a register on Synchron’s website where people interested in participating in future studies can sign up. Watch the video in this article to see the Synchron BCI in action controlling Apple and Amazon devices. You can also check out our previous coverage of Synchron, including a demo of how the Stentrode is implanted in the brain without the need for open brain surgery and our interview with Mark, one of the first ten people to use and play a role in Synchron’s BCI in many of his demo videos.
