TL;DRSurgeons at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai have performed the world’s first surgery using a commercially approved brain-computer interface, implanting Neuracle’s coin-sized NEO device in a patient who lost hand function to a spinal-cord injury. The angle: China beat Neuralink to the commercial finish line by choosing a deliberately more modest device, one that rests on the brain’s surface rather than piercing it, and got it approved, insured and into a patient in four months. It is the commercialisation-over-ambition pattern applied to neurotech.
China has performed the world’s first surgery using a commercially approved brain-computer interface. Surgeons at Huashan Hospital in Shanghai implanted a coin-sized chip in a patient with impaired hand movement, the South China Morning Post reports.
The patient had lost hand function after a spinal cord injury in a car accident a decade ago. The procedure captured stable brain signals, and the person is recovering with steady vital signs.
The milestone is real, and so is the caveat. China got here by building a more modest device than the one Neuralink is chasing.
What NEO actually is
