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    Neurotech tracker: brain-computer interfaces and brain mapping

    Implanted brain-computer interfaces moved from academic studies to company trials and first approvals between 2024 and 2026: China approved an invasive BCI in March 2026, and US companies run feasibility studies for movement and speech.[1][2][3] In parallel, brain mapping produced whole-fly and cubic-millimetre mammalian connectomes, and governments began writing rules for neural data.[4][5][6]

    Editor reviewedStrict sourcingUpdated Neuroscience and brain-computer interfacesHealth and medicineLife sciences

    What we know

    • China's NMPA approved an implantable BCI hand-motor system for market use in March 2026[1]
    • FDA had authorized no long-term implantable BCI for marketing as of GAO's December 2024 review[9]
    • Precision Neuroscience's Layer 7 has FDA 510(k) clearance for implantation of up to 30 days[8]
    • Neuralink reported 21 trial participants worldwide in January 2026[2]
    • A peer-reviewed speech neuroprosthesis sustained 97.5% accuracy over 8.4 months in one participant[21]
    • Paradromics implanted its first Connect-One participant in June 2026[31]
    • The first complete male fruit fly central nervous system connectome was published in September 2026[4]
    • The BRAIN Initiative was funded at $429 million for fiscal 2026[27]

    What we don't know yet

    • When the first US pivotal trial of a long-term implanted BCI will begin, and which company will run it.
    • How Paradromics' real-time speech results compare in accuracy and speed with peer-reviewed systems; no figures have been published.
    • How many people Neuralink has implanted since January 2026, and whether its safety record holds as numbers grow.
    • Whether implanted electrodes stay stable in people over many years; the longest Paradromics data are from sheep.
    • Whether the MIND Act or other federal neural-data rules will advance in Congress.
    • Whether a whole mouse brain connectome is feasible with current methods and funding.
    Story status

    Story status

    State
    developing
    Started
    2006-07-13
    Timeline entries
    30
    Last entry

    Timeline data (JSON)

    Where things stand

    As of October 2026 the field has three fronts moving at once. Clinical BCIs are leaving the lab: China approved an implanted hand-motor BCI in March 2026, the PRIMA retinal implant received European CE marking in July, and in the US a short-term surface array is cleared while no long-term implant had been authorized as of GAO’s latest review.[1][7][8][9] Brain mapping finished the first complete male fly central nervous system in September 2026.[4] And rules for neural data are emerging, from UNESCO’s recommendation to Colorado’s law.[6][10]

    In vision restoration, Science Corporation’s PRIMA received two FDA Humanitarian Use Device designations in July 2026, a step toward US approval, and in October the company reported that vision gains held at 36 months in its trial.[11][12] In neural-data law, four states (Colorado, California, Connecticut and Montana) had enacted protections by mid-2025.[13] In basic neuroscience, the International Brain Laboratory released a brain-wide map of 621,733 neurons recorded with Neuropixels probes, and an AI foundation model trained on mouse visual cortex predicted connectivity in the MICrONS data.[14][15] AI is also moving into devices: Synchron uses NVIDIA‘s Holoscan platform to speed up decoding.[16]

    What to watch next

    • US pivotal trials. Synchron said its November 2025 funding would accelerate pivotal trials. The start of the first pivotal study of a long-term implanted BCI would be the clearest sign of a path to FDA approval.[17][18]
    • Speech trial data. Neuralink’s VOICE study aims for 140 words per minute, and Paradromics has reported real-time speech without figures. Peer-reviewed results would allow comparison with academic systems.[19][20][21]
    • Participant counts and safety. Neuralink’s last published count was 21 participants in January 2026, with no serious device-related adverse events reported.[2][22]
    • Precision’s next FDA step. Precision raised $250 million in 2026 partly to take Layer 7 through further FDA review beyond its 30-day clearance.[23]
    • China. A July 2026 analysis counted five NMPA-approved BCI-related products and 134 registered trials; further approvals are a key indicator.[24]
    • Neural-data law. Four states had neural-data laws by mid-2025; watch for more and for any movement on the federal MIND Act.[13][25]
    • PRIMA in the US. The device is pending FDA approval through the Humanitarian Device Exemption route.[26][11]
    • Connectomics. After the fly and cubic-millimetre maps, the next milestones are larger mammalian volumes; funding depends partly on the BRAIN Initiative, set at $429 million for 2026.[5][27]

    Key numbers as of October 2026

    MeasureLatest figure
    Neuralink trial participants21 (January 2026)[2]
    Synchron Stentrode implants10 (November 2025)[28]
    Precision Layer 7 implanted study patientsMore than 100 (company figure)[29]
    Peer-reviewed speech BCI accuracy97.5% over 8.4 months, one participant[21]
    NMPA-approved BCI-related products in China5 (June 2026)[24]
    BRAIN Initiative budget$429 million (fiscal 2026)[27]

    How this tracker is maintained

    Entries are added when a primary source (a peer-reviewed paper, regulator, trial registry or company announcement) or two independent outlets confirm them. Company performance claims that have not been peer-reviewed are marked as reported.[20][30]

    Timeline

    27 confirmed3 reported

    1. reported

      PRIMA 36-month results show durable vision gains[12]

      Company-reported conference data; 18 patients evaluable for efficacy.

    2. reported

      Neuralink reports 11.32 bits-per-second record with pretrained decoders[30]

      Company blog post; not peer-reviewed.

    3. reported

      Paradromics reports real-time speech in first participant[20]

      Company announcement; no accuracy or speed figures and no peer-reviewed paper yet.

    4. confirmed

      First complete male fly central nervous system connectome (Cell)[4]

    5. confirmed

      PRIMA retinal BCI receives CE mark and launches in Europe[7]

    6. confirmed

      PRIMA receives two FDA Humanitarian Use Device designations[11]

      The designations are a step toward, not the same as, FDA approval.

    7. confirmed

      First Paradromics Connexus implant announced[31]

    8. confirmed

      China approves first invasive BCI for market use (Neuracle)[1]

    9. confirmed

      BRAIN Initiative funding rises to $429 million for fiscal 2026[27]

    10. confirmed

      Neuralink reports 21 participants enrolled worldwide[2][22]

    11. confirmed

      FDA approves Paradromics' Connect-One speech BCI study[3]

    12. confirmed

      UNESCO adopts Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology[6][48]

    13. confirmed

      Precision publishes minimally invasive delivery of its 1,024-channel array[47]

    14. confirmed

      Montana's neurotechnology-data law takes effect[46]

    15. confirmed

      MIND Act on neural data introduced in US Senate[25]

    16. confirmed

      International Brain Laboratory publishes brain-wide map of 621,733 neurons[14]

    17. confirmed

      Inner speech decoded from motor cortex (Cell)[44][45]

    18. confirmed

      Connecticut's neural-data protections take effect[43]

    19. confirmed

      Precision Neuroscience receives FDA 510(k) clearance for Layer 7 (up to 30 days)[8]

    20. confirmed

      MICrONS publishes functional connectome of a cubic millimetre of mouse cortex[42][5]

    21. confirmed

      Synchron announces work with NVIDIA's Holoscan AI platform[16][41]

    22. confirmed

      California's neural-data amendment to its consumer privacy law takes effect[40]

    23. confirmed

      Synchron's COMMAND study meets one-year safety endpoint in six patients[39]

    24. confirmed

      FlyWire publishes whole adult fly brain connectome[38]

    25. confirmed

      UC Davis speech neuroprosthesis reaches 97.5% accuracy (NEJM)[21][37]

    26. confirmed

      Cubic millimetre of human cortex reconstructed at nanoscale (H01)[36]

    27. confirmed

      Neuralink starts its PRIME first-in-human study[35]

    28. confirmed

      BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network publishes motor cortex atlas[34]

    29. confirmed

      Handwriting BCI reaches 90 characters per minute (Nature)[33]

    30. confirmed

      First BrainGate paper shows cursor and prosthetic-hand control from motor cortex[32]

      A man with tetraplegia used a 96-electrode array, marking the start of the modern intracortical BCI era.

    Sources

    Each numbered claim is a statement we checked against the sources listed with it. Status shows how well established it is.

    1. [1]

      In March 2026 China's National Medical Products Administration approved an implantable BCI hand-motor system from Neuracle Medical Technology, described as the world's first invasive BCI medical device approved for market use. confirmedas of 2026-03-14

    2. [3]

      In November 2025 FDA granted Paradromics an Investigational Device Exemption for the Connect-One early feasibility study of its Connexus BCI to restore speech and computer control, initially enrolling two participants. confirmedas of 2025-11-20

    3. [4]

      In September 2026 a Janelia-led team published in Cell the first finished connectome of an entire male fruit fly central nervous system, including the brain and nerve cord. confirmedas of 2026-09-03

    4. [5]

      The MICrONS map covers one cubic millimetre of mouse visual cortex, with 523 million synapses, about four kilometres of axons and 1.6 petabytes of data. confirmedas of 2025-04-09

    5. [6]

      UNESCO's General Conference adopted the Recommendation on the Ethics of Neurotechnology on November 11, 2025, in Samarkand, Uzbekistan; it is a non-binding standard-setting instrument. confirmedas of 2025-11-11

    6. [7]

      In July 2026 Science Corporation's PRIMA retinal implant received CE marking, allowing sale across 30 European countries, and the company announced its European commercial launch. confirmedas of 2026-07-22

    7. [8]

      In April 2025 Precision Neuroscience received FDA 510(k) clearance for its Layer 7 Cortical Interface, authorizing commercial use with implantation of up to 30 days. confirmedas of 2025-04-17

    8. [9]

      As of December 2024, FDA had not granted marketing authorization for any implantable device for BCI use. confirmedas of 2024-12-17

    9. [10]

      Colorado's HB24-1058, signed on April 17, 2024, added biological data, including neural data generated by measuring the activity of the central or peripheral nervous system, to the state's privacy protections for sensitive data. confirmedas of 2024-04-17

    10. [11]

      In July 2026 Science Corporation said PRIMA had received two FDA Humanitarian Use Device designations, for blindness from advanced geographic atrophy and for vision loss from Stargardt disease; the device still needs FDA approval through a Humanitarian Device Exemption. confirmedas of 2026-07-22

    11. [12]

      In October 2026 Science Corporation reported 36-month follow-up from the PRIMA trial, presented at the EURETINA congress; with 18 patients evaluable for efficacy, mean improvement was 29 letters on an eye chart, and no new safety signal emerged between 12 and 36 months. reportedas of 2026-10-05

    12. [13]

      By mid-2025 four US states, Colorado, California, Connecticut and Montana, had enacted laws covering neural or neurotechnology data, all of them amendments to existing state privacy laws. confirmedas of 2025-08-12

    13. [14]

      In 2025 the International Brain Laboratory published a public brain-wide map of 621,733 neurons recorded with 699 Neuropixels probes in 139 mice across 12 laboratories, covering 279 brain areas. confirmedas of 2025-09-03

    14. [15]

      A 2025 study trained an AI foundation model on visual-cortex activity from several mice; it predicted responses to new kinds of stimuli, adapted to new mice with little training, and predicted cell types and connectivity in the MICrONS dataset. confirmedas of 2025-04-09

    15. [16]

      Synchron uses NVIDIA's Holoscan, an AI sensor-processing platform, to try to make decoding faster and more accurate, and demonstrated its system with an Apple Vision Pro at NVIDIA's GTC conference in March 2025. confirmedas of 2025-03-19

    16. [17]

      Synchron raised a $200 million Series D in November 2025, bringing its total funding to $345 million, to prepare pivotal trials and develop a next-generation high-channel interface delivered by catheter. confirmedas of 2025-11-06

    17. [18]

      FDA issued final guidance in May 2021 on non-clinical testing and clinical study design for implanted BCI devices for patients with paralysis or amputation, covering both feasibility and pivotal studies. confirmedas of 2021-05-20

    18. [20]

      In September 2026 Paradromics said its first Connect-One participant had used Connexus for real-time speech and text communication, choosing her own words and answering open-ended questions; the company did not publish accuracy or speed figures. confirmedas of 2026-09-14

    19. [21]

      The UC Davis neuroprosthesis reached 99.6 percent accuracy on a 50-word vocabulary on its first day of use and sustained 97.5 percent accuracy over 8.4 months, with the participant conversing at about 32 words per minute for more than 248 hours. confirmedas of 2024-08-15

    20. [23]

      Precision Neuroscience closed a $250 million Series D in 2026, bringing its total funding to $430 million, to expand clinical programs, pursue further FDA review of Layer 7 and build commercial infrastructure. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    21. [24]

      A July 2026 preprint counted five BCI-related products approved by China's NMPA as of June 2026 and 134 registered BCI trials, 79.1 percent of them using non-invasive systems and 65 percent targeting stroke rehabilitation. confirmedas of 2026-07-08

    22. [25]

      The MIND Act (S.2925), introduced in the US Senate in September 2025 by Senators Schumer, Cantwell and Markey, would direct the Federal Trade Commission to study how neural data should be protected. confirmedas of 2025-11-04

    23. [26]

      As of October 2026 Science Corporation describes PRIMA as commercially available in Europe and the United Kingdom and pending FDA approval in the United States. confirmedas of 2026-10-05

    24. [27]

      For fiscal 2026 the BRAIN Initiative was funded at $429 million, a rise of about one third driven largely by a scheduled increase in 21st Century Cures Act funds to $195 million, under an appropriations act signed on February 3, 2026. confirmedas of 2026-02-03

    25. [28]

      As of November 2025 Synchron's Stentrode had been implanted in 10 patients with paralysis across trials in the US and Australia. confirmedas of 2025-11-06

    26. [29]

      As of October 2026 Precision Neuroscience reports more than 100 implanted clinical study patients and more than 18 active hospital partners, and says its device is designed to be removable without damaging the brain. confirmedas of 2026-10-10

    27. [31]

      On June 17, 2026 Paradromics and University of Michigan Health announced the first Connexus implantation in the Connect-One study, in a woman with motor neuron disease who has difficulty speaking. confirmedas of 2026-06-17

    28. [32]

      In a 2006 Nature study, a man with tetraplegia used a 96-microelectrode array implanted in his primary motor cortex to move a computer cursor, open simulated e-mail and operate a prosthetic hand. confirmedas of 2006-07-13

    29. [33]

      In a 2021 Stanford study, a participant whose hand was paralysed by spinal cord injury used an intracortical BCI that decoded attempted handwriting to type 90 characters per minute with 94.1% raw accuracy, close to typical smartphone typing speeds for his age group (115 characters per minute). confirmedas of 2021-05-12

    30. [34]

      In 2021 the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network published, as its first major product, a multimodal cell census and atlas of the mammalian primary motor cortex, including a consensus taxonomy of cell types conserved from mouse to marmoset and human. confirmedas of 2021-10-06

    31. [36]

      A 2024 study reconstructed a cubic millimetre of human temporal cortex, removed during epilepsy surgery, at nanoscale resolution; it holds about 57,000 cells and 150 million synapses in 1.4 petabytes of data, and analysis showed glia outnumber neurons two to one. confirmedas of 2024-05-10

    32. [37]

      In the UC Davis speech neuroprosthesis study, a 45-year-old man with ALS received four microelectrode arrays with 256 electrodes in his left ventral precentral gyrus. confirmedas of 2024-08-15

    33. [38]

      The FlyWire consortium published in October 2024 a wiring diagram of a whole adult female fruit fly brain with 139,255 neurons and about 50 million chemical synapses, reconstructed from electron microscopy images and covering both hemispheres and the optic lobes. confirmedas of 2024-10-02

    34. [39]

      Synchron's US COMMAND early feasibility study enrolled six patients with severe paralysis, and all met the primary endpoint of no device-related serious adverse events causing death or permanent increased disability over one year. confirmedas of 2024-10-03

    35. [40]

      California's SB 1223, in effect from 1 January 2025, amended the California Consumer Privacy Act so that "sensitive personal information" includes neural data, giving consumers the right to limit a business's use of it. confirmedas of 2025-08-12

    36. [41]

      In March 2025 Synchron unveiled Chiral, which it described as a cognitive AI brain foundation model, and in January 2025 announced a partnership with NVIDIA's Holoscan platform. confirmedas of 2025-03-19

      • News · Synchron · March 19, 2025 press release listing (retrieved 2026-10-10)
    37. [42]

      The MICrONS dataset, published in April 2025, pairs calcium imaging of about 75,000 neurons in an awake mouse's visual cortex with an electron microscopy reconstruction of more than 200,000 cells and about half a billion synapses. confirmedas of 2025-04-09

    38. [43]

      Connecticut's SB 1295, in effect from 1 July 2025, added neural data to "sensitive data" under the Connecticut Data Privacy Act, generally barring its processing unless reasonably necessary or expressly consented to. confirmedas of 2026-02-24

    39. [44]

      A 2025 study in four participants found that inner speech is robustly represented in motor cortex and that imagined sentences can be decoded in real time. confirmedas of 2025-08-21

    40. [45]

      The same study found some aspects of free-form inner speech could be decoded during recall and counting tasks, and demonstrated strategies that prevent speech BCIs from unintentionally decoding private inner speech. confirmedas of 2025-08-21

    41. [46]

      Montana's SB 163, in effect from 1 October 2025, extended the state's Genetic Information Privacy Act to "neurotechnology data", with detailed express-consent requirements for its collection, use, transfer and sale. confirmedas of 2026-02-24

    42. [47]

      A 2025 paper by Precision Neuroscience researchers described delivering its 1,024-channel thin-film array without a craniotomy in pigs and cadavers, and reported intraoperative use in a five-patient pilot study. confirmedas of 2025-10-02

    43. [48]

      The UNESCO Recommendation states that privacy, including mental privacy, is fundamental for personal identity and agency, and calls for prior, free and informed consent to collect neural data except in life-threatening emergencies. confirmedas of 2025-11-11

    Revision history (2)
    1. Page created.
    2. Refresh: added state neural-data laws, PRIMA's FDA designations and 36-month data, the Synchron and NVIDIA work, the brain-wide map, the cell census atlas and the handwriting BCI.

    Created Oct 10, 2026. Last reviewed by an editor on Oct 10, 2026. Next scheduled review: Jan 10, 2027.

    Cite this page

    "Neurotech tracker: brain-computer interfaces and brain mapping." ContentLora, updated Oct 10, 2026. https://contentlora.com/events/neurotech-tracker

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