The BCI Pioneers Coalition is thrilled to celebrate one of our own, Phillip McKenzie, for his extraordinary achievement at the 2024 Cybathlon! As the pilot for PittCrew, a team from the University of Pittsburgh’s Rehab Neural Engineering Labs (RNEL), Phill not only brought home a gold medal but also achieved a perfect score in the Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) Race. Cybathlon is a global competition that brings together technology developers and individuals with disabilities to tackle real-world challenges using advanced assistive technologies. Competing remotely, Phill used cutting-edge brain implant technology developed by RNEL to navigate complex virtual tasks that simulate everyday activities, such as: • Navigating a wheelchair through obstacles like furniture and even moving robots. • Unlocking a door using a virtual key with precise brain-controlled movements. • Holding a cup steady under an ice dispenser—requiring focus and calmness to succeed. The Power of BCI Technology Phill competed using four intracortical microelectrodes implanted in his brain, two in the motor cortex to control movement and two in the somatosensory cortex for simulating a sense of touch. For the BCI Race, he relied on the motor cortex implants, which decode brain signals to control a virtual environment with exceptional precision. This

Keith Thomas

Now, Burkhart is creating a group for the BCI community led by its pioneering users to discuss the kinds of questions he had seven years ago — and to serve more broadly as a forum to talk with others in the BCI community. The BCI Pioneers Coalition will center on the unique experience of Burkhart and his peers, whose numbers have nearly doubled since Burkhart received his BCI.

16 years ago, Dennis DeGray was paralyzed in an accident. Now, computer implants in his brain allow him some semblance of control. By Ferris Jabr On the evening of Oct. 10, 2006, Dennis DeGray’s mind was nearly severed from his body. After a day of fishing, he returned to his home in Pacific Grove, Calif., and realized he had not yet taken out the trash or recycling. It was raining fairly hard, so he decided to sprint from his doorstep to the garbage cans outside with a bag in each hand. As he was running, he slipped on a patch of black mold beneath some oak trees, landed hard on his chin, and snapped his neck between his second and third vertebrae. While recovering, DeGray, who was 53 at the time, learned from his doctors that he was permanently paralyzed from the collarbones down. With the exception of vestigial twitches, he cannot move his torso or limbs. “I’m about as hurt as you can get and not be on a ventilator,” he told me. For several years after his accident, he “simply laid there, watching the History Channel” as he struggled to accept the reality of his injury. Some time

Facebook (as it was then known, before it entered the Metaverse) made headlines when it started funding brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, searching for a way to allow users to create text just by thinking it. Facebook was interested in creating a new way of interacting with technology – a system where a user could simply imagine speaking, and a device would turn those electrical impulses into text.

Imagine a world where our brains can dictate action without using our limbs. Contemplating this reality is mind-boggling, considering the technology that would be required to translate neurological signals into movement. It seems too good to be true in our lifetime, but Salt Lake City-based Blackrock Neurotech begs to disagree.

Lauded as the “world’s most advanced brain-computer interface company,” Blackrock Neurotech is the first to provide tetraplegic patients the ability to control robotic limbs directly from and with the brain—and the first to enable patients who have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to communicate again via an auditory speller directly controlled by their mind.

While a presidential meetup is a once-in-a-lifetime moment for many, a handshake in 2016 between 30-year-old Nathan Copeland and President Barack Obama felt extra special.

For starters, Copeland, paralyzed from the chest down after a car accident, was using a robotic hand – one controlled by two brain implants in his motor cortex.

With the on-brain nanoelectrodes, Copeland could restore the connection between brain and body. His thoughts moved the arm so that he could, quite literally, reach out to the President, to shake his hand.

For some people, a critical link – the one sending signals from brain to body, the one connecting thought to action – does not work properly, or in some cases, has been severed entirely.

Marcus Gerhardt, CEO and co-founder of the Salt Lake City, UT-based company Blackrock Neurotech, is creating a technology called a brain-computer interface. The tiny implant aims at restoring the connection between mind and motion.

In March 2017, Johnson broke his neck in a go-carting accident, leaving him almost completely paralysed below the shoulders. He understood his new reality better than most. For decades, he had been a carer for people with paralysis. “There was a deep depression,” he says. “I thought that when this happened to me there was nothing — nothing that I could do or give.”

By Lori Dajose When you absentmindedly reach out to pick up your cup of coffee and take a sip, what happens in your brain? Many studies have shown that brain activity begins to ramp up even before you are aware of your choice to move. But this poses a conundrum: Do we have free will to make our own choices, if our brains are already preparing for actions before we are even conscious of them? Now, a new study from the laboratory of Richard Andersen, James G. Boswell Professor of Neuroscience, and Leadership Chair and Director of the T&C Chen Brain–Machine Interface Center, gives new insights into how the brain encodes for our choices about movement. The research indicates that brain activity of abstract high-level choices (such as the desire to consume more coffee) connects to the actual actions (such as reaching out a hand) even before the awareness of such choices to move. “The implementation of current brain-machine interfaces that read out the intent of patients assume that they are simultaneously consciously aware of the intent that is being decoded from their brains,” says Andersen. “Taking into account this early subconscious activity is critical when designing algorithms for brain-computer interfaces