Brain-computer interface tool improves motor function of stroke patients: study

BEIJING, April 22 (Xinhua) -- A team of Chinese scientists have found during a clinical trial that brain-computer interface (BCI) rehabilitation can improve upper limb motor function in patients with stroke.

BCI is a kind of communication system that converts the "ideas" in the brain into instructions and has been used in stroke rehabilitation.

The researchers from the Beijing Tiantan Hospital under Capital Medical University led an investigator-initiated, 17-center clinical trial in China, in which 296 patients with ischemic stroke were randomized to receive BCI or traditional rehabilitation training for one month.

The primary efficacy outcomes showed that the score change from baseline of BCI group was noticeably higher than that of control group, according to a study recently published in the journal Cell Med.

There are nearly 200 medical brain-computer interface enterprises in China, with 25 percent of those enterprises working with implantable technology and 75 percent working with non-implantable technology, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology's report on the development and application of brain-computer interface technology (2023).