AsianFin – NeuroXess, a shanghai-based brain-computer interface (BCI) technology startup, has  announced the positive results from a clinical trial that occurred at the dawn of the new year in Shanghai. 

A woman patient in Huashan Hospital, unable to move or speak, thought of "Happy New Year 2025," and her mind was immediately read by a computer. Next, the Chinese characters were displayed on a screen while a robotic hand performed a heart-shaped gesture symbolizing love.

The first mind-controlled new year greetings marked a milestone in BCI research. The procedure, which involves real-time Chinese speech decoding and motor decoding, was designed by NeuroXess and operated by a neurosurgical team in the hospital.

The success of the clinical trial demonstrated significant advances in both motor and language decoding, enabling the translation of thoughts into actions ("do") and words ("speak"). With this breakthrough, NeuroXess became the world's sole company to achieve real-time motor decoding and real-time Mandarin decoding using invasive BCI technology.

In December 2024, based on the fully self-developed 256-channel implantable flexible BCI developed by NeuroXess, the teams of Dr. Tiger H. Tao, the founder of NeuroXess, and Dr. Jinsong Wu at Huashan Hospital successfully conducted the first clinical trial of real-time Chinese speech decoding.

The core breakthrough of this brain-computer interface trial lies in the real-time decoding technology for the Chinese language. During the clinical trial, an epilepsy patient with a brain tumor in the language area achieved full coverage of 418 Chinese syllables decoding within seven days of the surgery. The accuracy rate was as high as 71% for 142 commonly used Chinese syllables five days after surgery, and the delay was less than 100 milliseconds, which marked the highest level of real-time Chinese speech decoding to date.

Using this new decoding technique, the patient was able to synthesize Chinese in real-time through thought, control a digital avatar, interact with large language models, and convert speech neural signals into real-time commands to control a dexterous robotic hand.

In another clinical trial in August 2024, the teams successfully enabled a 21-year-old epilepsy patient with a motor-area lesion to control digital applications such as social media applications WeChat, Outlook, and e-commerce platform Taobao, as well as smart home devices and a wheelchair using the BCI device. This trial indicated the practicality of the technology for the daily activities of patients with motor deficits.

Speech Decoding, the Frontier Technology

While the brain-computer interface (BCI) is gaining momentum globally,  other companies pioneering invasive BCI technologies have primarily focused on motor decoding, scientists pointed out during the recent BCI Society International Forum in Shanghai.

Compared with the decoding of 26 alphabetic characters in English, Mandarin has 418 essential syllables and four tones. The research teams used the biggest database in the Chinese language to achieve the breakthrough.

Peng Lei, the CEO of NeuroXess, noted that speech decoding opens up a vast space where disabled patients can regain their speech capability and healthy people can have direct connections and interface through both human brain intelligence and artificial intelligence, thereby turning the exchange of minds envisioned in science fiction into reality, creating a "super-brain." 

NeuroXess, a Trailblazer in China   

Back in 2014, Tao joined the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences after receiving a doctoral degree from Boston University. In 2021, he founded NeuroXess, a pioneer BCI company in China with a focus on the development and application of invasive BCI technologies.

NeuroXess collaborated with top neurosurgeons in China, in particular with Dr. Mao Ying, the head of Huashan Hospital, and his team, which enabled the company to apply their research.

Tao recalled the ups and downs during the process of raising money. "When NeuroXess started to seek investments from venture capitalists, they were interested initially. However, they backed off upon learning the commercialization may take over 10 years. When I was about to give up on raising money, one key investor had a video conference with me. After one hour of the meeting, he decided to pour in 30 million yuan (about US$4.2 million). He also advised me to take my time, as he is willing to wait for 20 or 30 years (before the commercialization). If it fails, that would be seen as his philanthropic act for scientific research," he said.

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