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Bibliography on: Brain-Computer Interface

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Robert J. Robbins is a biologist, an educator, a science administrator, a publisher, an information technologist, and an IT leader and manager who specializes in advancing biomedical knowledge and supporting education through the application of information technology. More About:  RJR | OUR TEAM | OUR SERVICES | THIS WEBSITE

RJR: Recommended Bibliography 28 Oct 2026 at 01:41 Created: 

Brain-Computer Interface

Wikipedia: A brain–computer interface (BCI), sometimes called a neural control interface (NCI), mind–machine interface (MMI), direct neural interface (DNI), or brain–machine interface (BMI), is a direct communication pathway between an enhanced or wired brain and an external device. BCIs are often directed at researching, mapping, assisting, augmenting, or repairing human cognitive or sensory-motor functions. Research on BCIs began in the 1970s at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) under a grant from the National Science Foundation, followed by a contract from DARPA. The papers published after this research also mark the first appearance of the expression brain–computer interface in scientific literature. BCI-effected sensory input: Due to the cortical plasticity of the brain, signals from implanted prostheses can, after adaptation, be handled by the brain like natural sensor or effector channels. Following years of animal experimentation, the first neuroprosthetic devices implanted in humans appeared in the mid-1990s. BCI-effected motor output: When artificial intelligence is used to decode neural activity, then send that decoded information to some kind of effector device, BCIs have the potential to restore communication to people who have lost the ability to move or speak. To date, the focus has largely been on motor skills such as reaching or grasping. However, in May of 2021 a study showed that an AI/BCI system could be use to translate thoughts about handwriting into the output of legible characters at a usable rate (90 characters per minute with 94% accuracy).

Created with PubMed® Query: (bci OR (brain-computer OR brain-machine OR mind-machine OR neural-control interface) NOT 26799652[PMID] ) NOT pmcbook NOT ispreviousversion

Citations The Papers (from PubMed®)

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RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Guo L (2026)

Cybertissue neuroprosthetics: a new implantable neuroprosthetics paradigm to achieve seamless lifetime integration.

Journal of neural engineering, 23(5):.

Objective.Despite decades of advances in neural interface technology, the long-term instability of implantable neuroprostheses remains a major barrier to achieving reliable lifetime performance. Chronic foreign-body reactions and fibrotic encapsulation progressively degrade the electrode-tissue interface, leading to signal deterioration and eventual device failure. Existing strategies that focus on improving material biocompatibility, reducing mechanical mismatch, or modifying implant surfaces have produced important but largely incremental improvements, while leaving the fundamental challenge unresolved. This perspective paper introduces a fundamentally different paradigm: cybertissue neuroprosthetics (CN).Approach.CN moves beyond the traditional electrode-based neural interface by treating the implant itself as a functional tissue device-composed of living cells and optionally augmented with minimal nanoelectronics, nanomaterials, or genetic modifications-designed to integrate structurally and functionally with the host nervous system to achieve long-term neuromodulation and information exchange. By minimizing or eliminating foreign materials and leveraging the brain's own cellular signaling mechanisms, CN promises to overcome the inherent limitations of current inorganic neuroprosthetic devices and seeks to achieve seamless lifetime integration between neuroprosthetic devices and the nervous system.Main results.This paper introduces the CN concept, unifies a range of emerging research directions under this umbrella, and articulates the core opportunities-from engineered cybercells to transplantable living devices-that collectively define a new interdisciplinary frontier.Significance.We argue that CN represents a foundational shift in neuroprosthetics, with the potential to deliver truly lifetime neural implants that are biologically integrated, self-sustaining, and clinically transformative.

RevDate: 2026-10-24
CmpDate: 2026-10-24

Gorenshtein A, Omar M, Jia E, et al (2026)

Limits of Trial-Adaptive Neural-Language Fusion Across Large Language Models in P300 Brain-Computer Interfaces.

medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences pii:2026.08.30.26361777.

OBJECTIVE: Published P300-speller fusion schemes fix prior trust regardless of trial reliability; we tested whether a reliability estimate improves on it.

METHODS: We reanalyzed 3,373 archived P300-speller selections from 47 people with ALS (BigP3BCI). A fair, matched-search-space comparison, tuning both a fixed weight and an adaptive policy out-of-fold, was evaluated across 22 evaluable language-model priors up to 46.7B parameters. Two representative priors, GPT-2 and a classical 5-gram, additionally received detailed naive and mechanistic analyses.

RESULTS: No prior's 95% CI favored adaptive fusion under the fair comparison, despite unexploited oracle headroom at every scale. Under GPT-2, the naive comparison was significantly worse for adaptive fusion; both anchors converged to a degenerate or near-degenerate fair-comparison solution. For the representative anchors, three further controllers failed to convert that headroom into benefit; the fixed-fused posterior's output probability outperformed the best controller for flagging errors (2.8- to 3.8-fold enrichment).

CONCLUSION: A tuned fixed weight is a difficult-to-beat default across the tested scale range; reliability estimation gave no deployable adaptive advantage.

SIGNIFICANCE: Adaptive weighting should be validated against a fairly tuned baseline across model families and scales; in this dataset, the fused output's confidence identified high-risk selections better than the tested purpose-built ranker.

RevDate: 2026-10-24

Hu Y, Wang Q, Sun K, et al (2026)

Engineering a low cytotoxicity recombinant rabies virus neurotracer via N-gene recoding.

Journal of virology [Epub ahead of print].

UNLABELLED: Viral-vector-based tracers have proven invaluable for mapping neural circuits. Rabies virus (RV)-based retrograde trans-monosynaptic tracers have been widely used for depicting the input neural circuit of targeted neuronal populations. However, the cytotoxicity of the RV tracer limits its application. Here, we employed the synthetic attenuated virus engineering technology to recode the N gene of the RV SAD-B19 strain by codon pair deoptimization to generate attenuated RV tracers. The characteristics of the recoded RV tracers were tested both in vitro and in vivo. The full-length recoded N gene abolished viral rescue, whereas the partial recoded N gene supported successful viral recovery. Compared to its parent, the recoded RV trans-monosynaptic tracer exhibited lower cytotoxicity and labeled more input neurons. It can also robustly express proteins to visualize the neuronal morphology and manipulate the neural circuit activity. Collectively, our work generated a new retrograde trans-monosynaptic tool, which complements existing neural circuit tracers.

IMPORTANCE: Viral vectors play an important role across multiple fields in biomedicine. In the neuroscience community, rabies virus (RV)-based retrograde trans-monosynaptic tracers have been widely used to map the input neural circuits of targeted neuronal populations. However, the inherent cytotoxicity of RV-based tracers limits their broader application. In this study, we utilized synthetic attenuated virus engineering technology to recode the RV N gene, generating an attenuated neurotracer that will significantly benefit future neuroscience research.

RevDate: 2026-10-24

Jiang X, Zhang L, Li S, et al (2026)

Combined neuromodulation techniques via a central-peripheral-central strategy facilitate functional recovery from AIS A to AIS C in a patient with complete spinal cord injury: A case report.

The journal of spinal cord medicine [Epub ahead of print].

CONTEXT: Complete spinal cord injury (SCI) has traditionally been considered irreversible. However, accumulating evidence suggests that subclinical neural pathways may persist. Multimodal combined neuromodulation targeting brain-spinal-peripheral circuits holds promise to unlock latent neural plasticity, but clinical evidence for its application in patients with clinically complete SCI remains limited.

FINDINGS: A 53-year-old male with chronic complete T9 SCI (AIS A) received a sequential multimodal neuromodulation protocol consisting of spinal cord electrical stimulation (SCS), brain-computer interface (BCI) training, primary motor cortex intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS), and peripheral magnetic stimulation (pMS) of the bilateral iliopsoas muscles, alongside 12 months of conventional rehabilitation. After one year of intervention, his neurological status improved from AIS A to AIS C (T9 to T12). The left lower limb motor score increased from 0 to 6, accompanied by the recovery of partial voluntary movement. Spontaneous defecation and penile erection were restored, and neuropathic pain was fully alleviated (the VAS score decreased from 8 to 0). Electrophysiological assessments revealed partial recovery of lower limb motor conduction and motor evoked potentials (MEPs), indicating possible corticospinal tract remodeling.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE: This single case provides preliminary clinical evidence that combined neuromodulation via central-peripheral-central strategy may be associated with functional recovery in complete SCI. Limitations of the single-case design and the lack of a control group are acknowledged, and the potential influence of spontaneous neurological recovery cannot be excluded. Further multicenter controlled trials are warranted to verify these findings.

RevDate: 2026-10-24

Wei L, Yu X, Zheng Y, et al (2026)

Discovery of a fluorinated benzoxathiazine AMPA receptor PAM that stabilizes the GluA2 dimer interface and displays antidepressant-like effects.

European journal of medicinal chemistry, 321(Pt 2):119423 pii:S0223-5234(26)00868-8 [Epub ahead of print].

Positive allosteric modulators (PAMs) of α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid (AMPA) receptors hold significant therapeutic promise for neuropsychiatric disorders driven by synaptic dysfunction. Building upon our previously established oxathiazine-dioxide scaffold, we designed and synthesized a novel series of compounds through systematic exploration of the 6-position. Among these compounds, the fluorinated analog C17 was identified as a superior lead candidate. Advanced Gaussian accelerated molecular dynamics (GaMD) simulations demonstrated that C17 stabilizes the GluA2 ligand-binding domain (LBD) dimer more effectively than the clinical benchmark TAK-653. By establishing a robust hydrogen-bonding network, C17 acts as a "molecular glue" to tightly lock the receptor in its canonical activated conformation, thereby preventing transition into the desensitized state. Translating these mechanistic insights into in vivo activity, C17 exhibited potent antidepressant-like efficacy in a chronic social defeat stress mouse model. Electrophysiological characterization confirmed that C17 potentiates (S)-AMPA-induced currents in rat hippocampal neurons without intrinsic agonism. Furthermore, C17 concentration-dependently upregulated brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression. These results identify C17 as an AMPA receptor PAM with a distinct dimer-stabilizing profile, positioning it as a compelling candidate for treating major depressive disorder (MDD).

RevDate: 2026-10-25

Sun M, Ma X, Wang X, et al (2026)

Fabrication Strategies and Performance Optimization Strategies of Flexible Brain-Computer Interface Electrodes.

Advanced healthcare materials pii:e71870 [Epub ahead of print].

Brain-computer interface (BCI) provides a direct communication pathway between the brain and external devices and has been applied in neurological disease treatment, motor rehabilitation, and human-computer interaction. Electrodes play essential roles in recording and modulating neural signals, and their performance directly affects signal quality, spatial resolution, and long-term stability. Traditional rigid electrodes suffer from mechanical mismatch with brain tissue, which may induce tissue damage and reduce recording stability during long-term implantation. Flexible electrodes offer improved mechanical compatibility and have emerged as promising alternatives. Recent advances in materials science, micro/nanofabrication, and interface engineering have enhanced the electrical, mechanical, and biological performance of flexible BCI electrodes. This review summarizes neural signal characteristics, electrode requirements, fabrication strategies, and performance optimization approaches. The major fabrication methods include microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), printing and transfer, laser processing and thermal drawing, and electrospinning, while deposition and surface modification are discussed as functional enhancement strategies. The review also highlights challenges associated with large-scale manufacturing, long-term stability, and the physical and clinical limitations of invasive, semi-invasive, and noninvasive electrodes. Future directions involving intelligent, wireless, and self-powered systems, together with clinical translation, are discussed to promote the development of flexible electrodes for BCI applications.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-25

Wang W, Zhang J, Zhang J, et al (2026)

Structure-guided development of G protein-biased apelin receptor agonists for cardiovascular disease.

Journal of Zhejiang University. Science. B, 27(10):1059-1065.

Apelin receptor (APLNR) is a crucial G protein-coupled receptor that plays a central role in cardiovascular homeostasis; therefore, it represents a promising therapeutic target for heart failure, myocardial infarction, cardiac hypertrophy, and pulmonary arterial hypertension. However, the activation of APLNR simultaneously engages inhibitory G protein (Gi)-mediated protective signaling and β-arrestin pathways that are associated with pathological cardiac remodeling, thereby imposing significant limitations and challenges for the therapeutic development of conventional balanced agonists. Recent advances in structural biology and pharmacology have provided valuable mechanistic insights into receptor activation and biased signaling. High-resolution cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structures revealed the conformational basis of signal bias, enabling the rational design of fully G protein-biased agonists that retain cardiovascular benefits while avoiding hypertrophic effects. This review summarizes recent progress in APLNR signaling mechanisms and biased ligand development, highlighting a number of emerging strategies for the precision pharmacological targeting of this receptor.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-26

Althobaiti M (2026)

Melanin Bias in Cerebral fNIRS: A Monte Carlo Study Toward Equitable Optical Brain Sensing.

Biosensors, 16(10):.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an optical biosensing modality that transduces cortical hemodynamics into a measurable near-infrared signal, underpinning wearable brain monitors and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). Because epidermal melanin is a strong near-infrared absorber, device sensitivity may depend on skin tone, raising an equity concern for optical neural biosensors. (1) Objective: We quantify, by Monte Carlo simulation, how epidermal melanin biases the cerebral sensitivity of continuous-wave fNIRS biosensors across the Fitzpatrick scale, and evaluate source-wavelength selection as a device-level mitigation. (2) Methods: Using a physically sourced melanin model and a two-stage design-an idealized layered slab for controlled sweeps and the Colin27 anatomical atlas for realistic-geometry confirmation-we computed gray-matter sensitivity for three skin tones, four wavelengths, and seven source-detector separations. (3) Results: Melanin acts as a surface gate that lowers absolute cerebral sensitivity by up to ~12.5-fold (at 690 nm) for dark skin-and by ~5-fold at the 850 nm optimum-while preserving depth selectivity; longer wavelengths reduce the penalty (dark-skin retained sensitivity rising from 8.0% at 690 nm to 29.6% at 940 nm) but never remove it; and 850 nm is a practical optimum for single-wavelength cerebral sensitivity, combining the highest absolute sensitivity with improved equity, whereas 940 nm gains relative equity only as absolute signal collapses through water absorption. Atlas simulations reproduce the 850 nm optimum in realistic anatomy under identical optical assumptions and show that idealized slabs overestimate sensitivity ~50-fold and that sensitivity varies ~19-fold with probe placement. (4) Conclusions: Skin tone and anatomy compound to disadvantage darker-skinned users of optical neural biosensors; wavelength selection and a sourced correction-factor framework offer concrete routes toward equitable device design.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-26

Zhu M, Li K, Zhu J, et al (2026)

A Complementary Dual-Branch Receptive Field Network for Cross-Channel-Density Motor Imagery EEG Decoding.

Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland), 11(10):.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) enable direct communication between the brain and external devices, providing a bio-inspired link between humans and artificial systems. However, electroencephalography (EEG)-based motor imagery (MI) decoding continues to pose challenges, due to limited temporal exploitation and insufficient spatio-temporal modeling. To alleviate these limitations, a complementary dual-branch receptive field network (DBRFNet) is proposed for cross-channel-density MI-EEG decoding. Specifically, two complementary branches with distinct temporal receptive fields are designed to capture multi-scale temporal dynamics. Each branch employs a progressive spatio-temporal module integrating temporal, depthwise spatial, and dilated convolutions for modeling short- and long-range temporal dependencies. The features from the two branches are fused using element-wise addition and further encoded for classification. The proposed method is evaluated on three public datasets representing low-, medium-, and high-density EEG configurations. DBRFNet achieves decoding accuracies of 80.48%, 84.37%, and 92.24% under cross-validation analysis, and 87.76%, 80.94%, and 94.64% under hold-out analysis, demonstrating competitive performance compared with state-of-the-art methods. Ablation studies further validate the effectiveness of each component within the proposed architecture. These results indicate that DBRFNet effectively learns discriminative spatio-temporal representations and provides a robust solution for MI-BCI systems.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-26

Mutiari PD, Dhewayani IN, Sulistyani LD, et al (2026)

A Biodegradable Fish-Derived Gelatin-Chitosan Sponge as a Novel Hemostatic Agent in a Rat Tooth Extraction Model.

Marine drugs, 24(10):.

BACKGROUND: Rapid hemostasis is essential in oral surgery to minimize blood loss, prevent postoperative complications, and promote early wound healing. This study developed freeze-dried fish-derived gelatin-chitosan composite sponges with different polymer compositions (G100, GC75, GC50, and GC25) and regularly investigated the relationships among scaffold microstructure, physicochemical properties, biological performance, and hemostatic efficacy.

METHODS: The sponges were characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, mechanical testing, swelling, and degradation analyses. Biological performance was evaluated through cytocompatibility and antibacterial assays, while hemostatic function was assessed using BCI, BCT, fibrin generation, PT, and PTT.

RESULTS: Among the formulations, the gelatin-rich composite GC75 exhibits an interconnected porous structure, high fluid-absorption capacity, and a distinct degradation profile while maintaining acceptable cytocompatibility. Compared with the other formulations and a commercial gelatin sponge, GC75 demonstrated significantly enhanced hemostatic performance, as evidenced by lower BCI values, shorter BCT, and accelerated fibrin generation (all p < 0.001), while maintaining physiological PT and aPTT values. In a rat tooth extraction model, GC75 significantly reduced bleeding time and achieved hemostatic efficacy comparable to or better than the commercial control.

CONCLUSIONS: These findings demonstrate the potential of gelatin-rich fish-derived gelatin-chitosan composite sponges as biodegradable hemostatic biomaterials for oral surgical applications.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-26

He J, Lee H, X Yao (2026)

Beyond Overlap: Development and Validation of the Inclusion of AI in Self (IAIS) Scale and Its Moderating Role in the Relationship Between AI Identity and AI Threat.

Journal of Intelligence, 14(10):.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly integrated into people's self-concepts, yet a psychometrically robust multi-item pictorial instrument for assessing the inclusion of AI in self (IAIS) is lacking. Drawing on self-expansion theory and the AI-mediated communication (AI-MC) model, we developed and validated the IAIS scale. The IAIS comprises four pictorial items capturing overlap, distance, centrality, and size, designed as indicators of a single dimension. In Study 1, Chinese university students (N = 195, 56.9% male) were recruited through campus online platforms using convenience sampling. We conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (EFA/CFA), examined reliability and convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity (the last via Steiger's Z tests), and assessed gender invariance with multigroup CFA. In Study 2, the scale was cross-validated in a sample of Chinese employees (N = 513, 38.4% male) recruited through the Credamo online research platform. In Study 3, a mixed student-employee sample (N = 240, 43.3% male) completed a two-wave longitudinal survey with a 15-day interval. The moderating role of IAIS in the relationship between AI identity and AI threat was tested with PROCESS Model 1 (5000 bootstrap resamples). Results supported a replicable single-factor structure, good reliability, and convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity. IAIS significantly moderated the association between AI identity and AI threat. We conclude that IAIS is a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing the inclusion of AI in self, and that the negative association between AI identity and AI threat is stronger among individuals who include AI more deeply in the self.

RevDate: 2026-10-26

Bakels S, van de Ruit M, M Jafarian (2026)

Accurate EEG-based linear state-space model of cortical dynamics during a passive motor task with exogenous input.

Journal of neural engineering [Epub ahead of print].

OBJECTIVE: Revealing the dynamics of the brain in the presence of exogenous inputs is crucial for mechanistic understanding, interventions and regulations. We study state-space mathematical modeling of brain's cortical dynamics using electroencephalography (EEG) data in an experiment with continuous exogenous input.

APPROACH: We use subspace identification techniques to model the brain dynamics in a passive motor task experiment. The EEG data were recorded while participants were seated with their wrist strapped to a haptic manipulator. The manipulator imposed a continuous multisine angular perturbation to the wrist as the exogenous input to the brain.

MAIN RESULT: Using two subspace identification algorithms, we show that linear time-invariant state-space models accurately represent the measurements, in a latent space, assuming that the EEG data are the models' output. The model is verified and validated using data from seven participants. Moreover, we construct linear maps to relate the latent space dynamics to the neural source space. We verify that the findings of our model align with those identified in previous studies.

SIGNIFICANCE: Accurate linear model in the presence of exogenous input provides a pathway for designing parsimonious and simple controllers. In addition, it enables development of online monitoring, connectivity analysis and control relevant to neurorehabilitation, motor learning, and brain-computer interfacing.

RevDate: 2026-10-26

Xu X, Dong W, Wei F, et al (2026)

REFS: Robust EEG feature selection with incomplete labels for multi-dimensional emotion recognition.

Journal of neural engineering [Epub ahead of print].

OBJECTIVE: Compared to single-type features, multi-type electroencephalography (EEG) features provide a multi-level representation for analyzing multi-dimensional emotions. However, the high dimensionality of multi-type EEG features, combined with the relatively small number of high-quality EEG samples, poses challenges such as classifier overfitting and suboptimal real-time performance in the multi-dimensional emotion recognition task. As the number of EEG channels increases, the issue will become increasingly severe. Moreover, practical applications of affective brain-computer interface frequently encounters partial absence of multi-dimensional emotional label data due to diverse emotional self-assessment models, and ambiguity and variability in individual emotion perception.

APPROACH: To address these challenges, this study proposes a novel robust EEG feature selection method for incomplete multi-dimensional emotion recognition. The method leverages adaptive orthogonal latent semantic indexing to reconstruct the multi-dimensional emotional label space through second-order and higher-order relations, which could reduce the negative impact of missing values and outliers on label reconstruction. Simultaneously, it employs least squares regression with graph-based manifold learning regularization and global feature redundancy minimization regularization to enable EEG feature subset selection despite missing information, ultimately achieving robust and fast EEG-based multi-dimensional emotion recognition.

MAIN RESULTS: The proposed method was validated on three multi-dimensional emotional datasets with varying channel configurations, namely DREAMER, DEAP and HDED, under different label missing ratios. Experimental results show that the proposed method consistently outperforms thirteen state-of-the-art feature selection methods in terms of robustness for EEG emotional feature selection across various missing ratios.

SIGNIFICANCE: The proposed method provides a robust and efficient solution for feature selection in multi-dimensional emotion recognition under incomplete EEG label scenarios, delivering reliable performance for practical affective brain-computer interface applications.

RevDate: 2026-10-26
CmpDate: 2026-10-26

Fu Y, Yan L, Wang F, et al (2026)

[Theoretical system of brain-computer interface for basic research].

Sheng wu yi xue gong cheng xue za zhi = Journal of biomedical engineering = Shengwu yixue gongchengxue zazhi, 43(5):893-901.

Brain-computer interface (BCI) has achieved remarkable progress in brain signal acquisition, decoding algorithms, and related fields. Nevertheless, its underlying theoretical system remains largely fragmented, lacking a systematic characterization of system decodability, performance boundaries, and dynamic constraint mechanisms. To address this gap, this paper formalizes BCI systems as a closed-loop probabilistic information processing model from the perspectives of information theory and statistical decision-making. This paper constructs a foundational theoretical system consisting of scientific hypotheses, neuroscience principles, fundamental theorems, and basic laws, derives four results capable of guiding experimental design, and illustrates the application boundaries with reference to motor imagery BCI paradigms. This theoretical system is expected to provide a unified analytical benchmark for basic BCI research and drive the paradigm shift of BCI from engineering experience-driven algorithm optimization to theory-driven system analysis and design.

RevDate: 2026-10-26
CmpDate: 2026-10-26

Kong X, Zhang P, J Chen (2026)

[Multi-scale motor imagery electroencephalogram classification framework with dynamic weighted multi-source domain alignment].

Sheng wu yi xue gong cheng xue za zhi = Journal of biomedical engineering = Shengwu yixue gongchengxue zazhi, 43(5):929-937.

Brain-computer interface (BCI) technology facilitates information exchange between the brain and external devices, offering new approaches to human-computer interaction and medical rehabilitation. However, distribution shifts caused by inter-subject variability in electroencephalogram (EEG) signals limit classification performance and generalization. To address this issue, DWDANet, an EEG classification framework integrating multi-scale spatiotemporal feature modeling with dynamically weighted domain alignment, is developed. Multi-scale convolutions extracted spatiotemporal features, while a Transformer encoder modeled global dependencies. Multi-source domain alignment with dynamic weighting enhanced collaborative modeling across source domains and improved generalization. In within-subject evaluations, DWDANet achieved accuracies of 87.22%, 90.32%, and 68.82% on the BCI IV-2a, BCI IV-2b, and SHU-MI datasets, respectively. In cross-subject experiments, it achieved accuracies of 70.61%, 81.43%, and 64.38% on these datasets, respectively, outperforming other existing methods on all three. These results indicate that DWDANet could provide an effective approach to improving motor imagery EEG classification performance and cross-subject generalization.

RevDate: 2026-10-26
CmpDate: 2026-10-26

Huang K, Ding P, Luo R, et al (2026)

[Mechanisms and outcome evaluation of neurofeedback in post-traumatic stress disorder intervention].

Sheng wu yi xue gong cheng xue za zhi = Journal of biomedical engineering = Shengwu yixue gongchengxue zazhi, 43(5):1075-1081.

Patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) still face challenges such as limited treatment response in some cases and substantial inter-individual variability when receiving existing interventions. Neurofeedback (NFB), as a closed-loop neuromodulation approach based on brain-computer interface (BCI), can guide patients to regulate abnormal neural activity patterns by providing real-time feedback on brain activity features, and therefore shows potential for PTSD rehabilitation. This paper reviews the regulatory mechanisms of NFB on the prefrontal-limbic emotion regulation circuit and the dysregulated states of the default mode network, salience network, and central executive network. It compares three major modalities, including electroencephalography, real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging, and functional near-infrared spectroscopy, in terms of feedback targets, spatiotemporal resolution, and clinical applicability. Based on a multidimensional evaluation framework composed of clinical scales, neurophysiological indicators, and functional recovery indicators, this paper further discusses the clinical positioning of NFB relative to first-line treatments and the potential synergistic mechanisms of its combined application with psychological interventions. Current studies still face limitations such as insufficient control design and a lack of standardized training parameters. Future research should integrate individualized target selection and machine learning-based modeling to promote the standardized application of NFB.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Lai S, Yu J, Zhang L, et al (2026)

An epigenetic aging-informed dietary pattern is associated with a spectrum of aging-related health outcomes.

Nature communications, 17(1):.

Diet is associated with biological aging, yet few existing dietary indices have been developed specifically to target biological aging. We develop a data-driven, food-based Empirical Dietary Index for Slower Epigenetic Aging (EDISEA) to identify dietary features predictive of lower GrimAge2 acceleration. Higher EDISEA is associated with 4.17 years slower epigenetic aging in the derivation sample of 1,711 participants (P-value < 0.001) and 3.77 years slower aging in an independent sample of 2,311 participants. Higher EDISEA is consistently associated with lower all-cause mortality (pooled hazard ratio = 0.80, 95% CI 0.76, 0.85) in two US cohorts, and with lower risks of aging-related diseases, functional limitations, and multimorbidity across US and UK aging cohorts. Outcome-wide analyses in a large UK population-based cohort further show broad health associations, supported by molecular and neuroimaging signatures of more favourable vascular, inflammatory, metabolic, and brain structural profiles. EDISEA may provide an epigenetic aging-informed framework for studying dietary strategies relevant to healthy aging.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Li Y, Fu Y, Duan Y, et al (2026)

Prenatal antiseizure medication exposure and offspring structural and neurodevelopmental outcomes: an umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

BMC pregnancy and childbirth, 26(1):.

BACKGROUND: Review-level evidence on prenatal antiseizure medication (ASM) exposure is difficult to interpret because outcome domains are often synthesized separately, primary studies overlap, and comparator frameworks and certainty vary. We aimed to calibrate evidence across structural and neurodevelopmental outcomes.

METHODS: We conducted an anchor-based umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PROSPERO: CRD420251142541), searching four databases through December 31, 2025. One prespecified anchor review represented each drug-outcome-comparator question; overlapping reviews were not combined into second-order pooled estimates. AMSTAR 2, corrected covered area, GRADE, and directional umbrella-credibility classes were applied, with NS assigned when the 95% confidence interval included the null.

RESULTS: Fourteen reviews were included: nine structural and five neurodevelopmental. All had Low or Critically Low AMSTAR 2 confidence, and ASD/ADHD review overlap was very high (CCA, 28.1%). Valproate showed the most consistent retained pattern, including Class I credibility for combined major congenital anomalies and the most credible retained neurodevelopmental signal for autism spectrum disorder (adjusted hazard ratio, 3.10; 95% CI, 2.24-4.28; Low certainty; Class II). Topiramate showed an oral-cleft signal with Low certainty and Class III credibility. The lamotrigine estimate for major congenital anomalies was NS, whereas the orofacial-cleft estimate excluded the null but had Very Low certainty (OR, 1.42; 95% CI, 1.05-1.92; Class IV). Other retained neurodevelopmental anchors had Very Low certainty and were Class IV or NS; no independent pairwise neurodevelopmental anchor was available for carbamazepine, oxcarbazepine, topiramate, or levetiracetam.

CONCLUSIONS: Review-level evidence was most consistent for valproate and aligned with its established structural and neurodevelopmental risks. NS or Very Low-certainty findings for non-valproate ASMs should not be interpreted as evidence of no risk. Comparative safety requires individualized risk-benefit assessment rather than binary safety classifications.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Liu Y, L Chen (2026)

Auditory Rhythm Biases Visual Speed Perception and Shows Tempo-Dependent Signatures During Motion Extrapolation.

The European journal of neuroscience, 64(8):.

Auditory signals can bias visual motion judgements, but how dynamic auditory structure affects variable-speed motion during perception and subsequent extrapolation remains unclear. Across three experiments, we paired changing visual motion with changes in auditory tempo or pitch. In Experiment 1, slow and fast tempi produced robust, opposite shifts in the point of subjective equality for visual speed-change judgements, without reliable evidence for a change in discrimination precision in this paradigm. Experiment 2 revealed a weaker asymmetric pitch effect: Descending pitch shifted judgements toward deceleration, whereas ascending pitch produced no reliable opposite shift. A pooled comparison localized the tempo-pitch difference primarily to the speeding-direction bias rather than psychometric slope. In Experiment 3, the omnibus three-level auditory effect on manual time-to-contact (TTC) was not significant; however, within the two sound-present conditions, accelerating tempo shortened mean manual TTC by approximately 32 ms relative to decelerating tempo. The corresponding primary eye-TTC contrast was small and not significant, although time-resolved eye analyses revealed a transient postocclusion eye-velocity effect together with broader sound-related pupil responses. Leave-one-condition-out model comparison nevertheless showed that the same tempo-by-physical-TTC functional model provided the best held-out prediction for both manual and eye-based estimates. Together, these findings indicate robust auditory-tempo biases in online visual speed judgements and more qualified, tempo-dependent signatures during forward extrapolation after visual information disappears; the absence of a JND effect here should not be generalized to all audiovisual motion tasks.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Hawkins JK (2026)

Nano-totalitarianism: Brain-computer interfaces, fusion databases, and the weaponisation of consciousness.

Torture : quarterly journal on rehabilitation of torture victims and prevention of torture, 36(2):.

Debate about interrogational torture still returns to the ticking-bomb scenario, despite the weight of evidence that it neither works nor withstands moral scrutiny. The post-9/11 record, from Abu Ghraib to the CIA black sites, already marked a decisive shift toward psychological forms of coercion. The technologies now emerging make a different kind of coercion possible. This paper argues that defence-funded brain-computer interfaces, of which Synchron's Stentrode is the clearest current example, combined with large language models and fusion databases, could support what I call nano-totalitarianism: the convergence of pervasive personal data, neurodata, adaptive AI, and technologically mediated coercion in ways that could penetrate or continuously condition the inner sphere of the person. Operationalised, this is a self-sustaining regime in which a detainee is held in continuous psychological distress through fabricated scenarios, interference with memory, and synthetic social contact. Such a system would turn neuroplasticity into an instrument, laying down durable neural pathways of fear, while automated monitoring assesses compliance in real time. Its lineage runs from MKULTRA's psychochemical experiments to the extraction logic of surveillance capitalism, and its endpoint is a panopticon inside the skull. The essay proceeds anticipatorily, distinguishing throughout between demonstrated current capability, plausible convergence of existing components, and speculative future possibility.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Zhu M, Zhang JF, Hu SX, et al (2026)

Shared Genetic and Regulatory Architecture of Congenital Heart Disease and Autism Spectrum Disorder Revealed by Cross-Tissue Multi-Omic Integration.

Genes, 17(10):.

Background: Congenital heart disease (CHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) co-occur more frequently than expected, suggesting shared developmental susceptibility. We aimed to identify cross-tissue molecular candidates linking cardiac and neurodevelopmental abnormalities. Methods: CHD- and ASD-associated genes were curated from MalaCards and SFARI Gene, and their intersection was defined as the CHD- and ASD-associated gene set (CAGES). Shared gene enrichment was assessed against the human protein-coding genome. CHD and ASD genome-wide association data were integrated with heart and brain cis-expression quantitative trait loci using Bayesian colocalization and summary data-based Mendelian randomization with HEIDI testing. Candidates were further evaluated using bulk transcriptomics, six machine learning feature selection methods, independent cohorts, and scTenifoldKnk virtual knockout analyses in developing human heart and cerebral cortex. Results: Seventy-three genes were shared between CHD and ASD. CHD7 showed suggestive colocalization for CHD and ASD, while lower genetically predicted CHD7 expression was associated with higher odds of both disorders, with nonsignificant HEIDI tests. MEF2C was downregulated in tetralogy of Fallot myocardium and selected by all six ASD machine learning methods, with consistently lower expression in ASD. CAGES-derived signatures discriminated independent CHD, ASD cord blood, and cortical cohorts. CHD7 virtual knockout analysis identified MEF2C as a computationally predicted regulatory candidate in the prenatal brain, particularly in late-fetal excitatory neurons and intermediate progenitor cells, with cell-type-specific predicted effects also observed in the developing heart. Conclusions: CHD and ASD share molecular susceptibility involving pleiotropic developmental mechanisms. CHD7 and MEF2C emerge as connected cross-tissue candidates across complementary genetically informed, transcriptomic, and developmental regulatory analyses, highlighting prenatal neuronal populations and developmental windows for investigating the heart-brain axis.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Chong ZY, Zhang Z, Chen X, et al (2026)

Short Video Addiction Risk Transitions Among University Students: A Three-Wave Latent Transition Analysis of Unintentional Procrastination and Self-Concept Clarity.

Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 16(10):.

This study examined changes in short video addiction (SVA) among university students. Three-wave longitudinal data were used to identify relative SVA profiles, estimate transitions among these profiles, and examine the prospective associations of unintentional procrastination and self-concept clarity with subsequent profile membership. A total of 2145 students completed at least one assessment. The primary latent transition analysis included 1135 students with valid SVA data at two or more waves, and the predictor analyses included 679 three-wave completers. Three ordered profiles characterized by lower, moderate, and higher SVA were identified. These profiles represent relative latent classes within the present sample and are not diagnostic categories. Profile membership showed both stability and movement across adjacent waves. In the classification error-adjusted predictor analyses, higher unintentional procrastination was associated with lower odds of membership in the lower profile relative to the higher profile among students initially in the moderate profile. Higher self-concept clarity was associated with greater odds of maintaining lower or moderate profile membership relative to membership in the higher profile. These findings indicate that relative SVA profile membership can change over time and that unintentional procrastination and self-concept clarity show different prospective associations with subsequent profile membership.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Cantillo-Negrete J, Rodríguez-García ME, Carrillo-Mora P, et al (2026)

Brain-Computer Interfaces for Cognitive Rehabilitation: A Narrative Review.

Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland), 13(10):.

Cognitive diseases/disorders are a major cause of disability affecting millions of people worldwide due to pathologies or conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, vascular cognitive impairment, and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. The effects of these diseases/disorders can range from subjective cognitive complaints to mild cognitive impairment and even dementia that can affect multiple cognitive domains, causing disability and alterations in daily functioning and quality of life. Cognitive training has been researched as a potential therapeutic option for treating cognitive disability. In particular, cognitive training delivered using brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) represents a promising technology for cognitive rehabilitation. For this reason, this work presents a narrative review aimed at bridging the clinical aspects of cognition performance and the technical features of BCI systems. Additionally, it reports on the current advances of BCIs for cognitive rehabilitation in the pathologies/conditions that are the main contributors of cognitive impairment globally. Specifically, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, mild cognitive impairment, cerebrovascular diseases, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder were included in the review; other pathologies that can also cause cognitive impairment such as multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, brain tumors, infectious diseases, and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia or autism spectrum disorder, or drug or toxin-related causes were outside the scope of the present review. Across the literature, studies have reported that BCI cognitive training can improve cognition performance for mild cognitive impairment, stroke, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, showcasing its feasibility as a complementary therapy. However, the amount of evidence is still scarce, with few reported randomized controlled clinical trials and all of the applications comprising non-invasive systems using electroencephalography, while invasive or other non-invasive approaches remain largely unassessed. Therefore, further research regarding the design of BCIs for targeting specific cognitive domains is necessary to allow for the future introduction of these types of systems into clinical rehabilitation environments, rather than only demonstrating their feasibility, as has been mainly done to date.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Tang Z, Li S, Li M, et al (2026)

Locomotor-State Dependence of Neuromodulation During Avian Free Flight.

Animals : an open access journal from MDPI, 16(20):.

Complex avian locomotor behaviors depend on the coordinated operation of neural processes involved in sensory perception, decision-making, and motor execution. Exogenous neural stimulation can alter motor output by intervening in neural processes, but its effects may depend on the current locomotor state. Here, we investigated the locomotor-state dependence of formatio reticularis medialis mesencephali (FRM) microstimulation in freely flying pigeons. Individualized stimulation parameters were screened under stable laboratory conditions and kept constant during free-flight experiments. Flight-state features before and during stimulation were extracted, and state-response models were constructed to quantify their associations with stimulation-evoked turning responses. Results showed that flight state during stimulation was more closely associated with turning responses than pre-stimulation state, with acceleration during stimulation making the largest contribution. When acceleration during stimulation was above the individual mean, turning-response dispersion decreased by 32.92%. In addition, pre-stimulation angular velocity was positively associated with acceleration during stimulation, indicating that the pre-stimulation locomotor state contains information related to the consistency of subsequent stimulation-evoked responses. These findings demonstrate that the effects of FRM microstimulation are locomotor-state dependent and provide a basis for identifying appropriate neuromodulation timing and improving response stability under complex locomotor conditions.

RevDate: 2026-10-27
CmpDate: 2026-10-27

Zhao W, Dai J, Pan Y, et al (2026)

STDR-Net: A Spatio-Temporal Dependency Refinement Network for Motor Imagery EEG Decoding.

Brain sciences, 16(10):.

Background/Objectives: Motor imagery electroencephalography (MI-EEG) contains weak, non-stationary patterns that evolve across channels and time. Effective decoding requires local sensorimotor structure, trial-wide context, and ordered temporal evolution to be represented without discarding information from earlier processing stages. Methods: We propose STDR-Net, a Spatio-Temporal Dependency Refinement Network that recalibrates convolutional tokens, models their global interactions, restores the original local representation through a cross-stage residual bridge, and refines the fused sequence with a bidirectional long short-term memory network. STDR-Net was evaluated on BCI Competition IV-2a, BCI Competition IV-2b, and the PhysioNet EEG Motor Movement/Imagery dataset against nine reproduced baselines. The PhysioNet experiment used a pooled mixed-participant trial-level split rather than an unseen-participant evaluation. Results: STDR-Net obtained accuracies of 82.69%, 86.99%, and 59.76% and Cohen's kappa values of 0.7692, 0.7398, and 0.46, respectively. It achieved the highest observed mean accuracy on IV-2a and competitive performance on IV-2b and PhysioNet. Bridge-specific, ordering, module, and augmentation ablations supported the proposed pathway on IV-2a, whereas the differences on IV-2b were small and not significant after multiplicity correction. Conclusions: The results support information-preserving dependency refinement as a competitive design for MI-EEG decoding, while also showing that its benefit depends on the dataset and evaluation setting.

RevDate: 2026-10-23
CmpDate: 2026-10-23

Wang L, Wang J, Dong S, et al (2026)

Biomimetic Nanofluidic Synapse with Programmable DNA Ion Gating for Neuromorphic Sensing and Computing.

Journal of the American Chemical Society, 148(36):39139-39151.

Biological synapses process information through coupled neurotransmitter and ion fluxes, while conventional electron-based solid-state devices struggle to replicate this chemoelectrical signaling mechanism. Herein, we develop a biomimetic nanofluidic synapse designed for precise and programmable chemical gating. The platform integrates programmable DNA nanochannel (DN) arrays within a phospholipid multilayer assembled in situ on a robust anodic aluminum oxide membrane (termed DPAM), forming a bioinspired ion-gating interface. Crucially, DNA sequence programming enables plug-and-play adaptability for diverse neurotransmitters, while tuning DN dimensions customizes ion transport kinetics. As a prototypical example, glutamate-gated N-methyl-d-aspartate-like signaling is demonstrated to regulate transmembrane Ca2+ flux, successfully emulating fundamental synaptic plasticity. Furthermore, by integrating these synaptic units into an artificial neural network, we demonstrate a chemically encoded handwritten-digit recognition task with an accuracy of 97.1%. This work establishes a versatile platform for neuromorphic systems allow directly processing biochemical signals, holding great promise for brain-machine interfaces and intelligent biosensing.

RevDate: 2026-10-26
CmpDate: 2026-10-23

Gu Y, Yin H, Wang Y, et al (2026)

Generalizable neural decoding for clinically scalable brain-computer interfaces.

npj biomedical innovations, 3(1):.

Brain-computer interfaces promise restored communication and movement, yet accuracy achieved under development rarely survives new sessions, users, tasks, or hardware. Generalization, not peak performance, determines clinical scalability. Here we examine generalizable neural decoding from development to deployment, organized by the domain held out at evaluation, target-data access, adaptation strategy, and the clinical conditions under which performance persists, identifying benchmarking standards, prospective validation, and hardware-algorithm co-design as prerequisites for durable benefit.

RevDate: 2026-10-25
CmpDate: 2026-10-24

Feng Y, Guo X, Huang P, et al (2026)

Polygenicity shapes distinct brain patterns and clinical profiles of bipolar disorder.

BMC medicine, 24(1):.

BACKGROUND: Bipolar disorder (BD) manifests both genetic predispositions and brain imaging abnormalities. Genetic analyses provide a powerful approach to disentangling the associations between BD and brain imaging-derived phenotype (IDP). However, in East Asian (EAS) populations, the genetic basis of these neuroimaging changes and their clinical relevance remains underexplored due to limited integrative evidence.

METHODS: We investigated the genetic architecture and clinical relevance of BD and brain IDPs in East Asian populations using individual-level data from the Chinese Bipolar Disorder (CN-BD) cohort (N = 3,920), summary statistics of BD from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) (N = 16,915) and of IDPs from the CHIMGEN Consortium (N = 7,058), and genotype and clinical data from the Chinese Longitudinal and Systematic Study of Bipolar Disorder cohort (CLASS-BD). We employed genetic correlation (GNOVA), multi-trait meta-analysis (MTAG, CPASSOC), and ancestry-specific fine-mapping (MESuSiE) to identify shared genetic loci. Functional annotation, protein association (SMR, BLISS), and spatiotemporal expression trajectory analyses were conducted. Bidirectional Mendelian Randomization (MR) assessed causal relationships, and polygenic risk score (PRS)-PheWAS explored phenome-level associations with clinical traits.

RESULTS: Our multi-trait meta-analysis identified 11 pleiotropic single nucleotide variants (SNVs) implicated in BD-IDP pairs, showing convergent enrichment in lipid metabolism and neurotransmitter biosynthesis pathways. Fine-mapping revealed an EAS-specific causal signal (rs7941324 near RPS27P20), which demonstrated high posterior inclusion probability in EAS but not European ancestries, and colocalized with BD and specific brain alterations. MR revealed 27 IDP-to-BD and 35 BD-to-IDP causal relationships, distinguishing structural changes of the parietal and temporal gyri as markers preceding BD onset and the right precuneus area as a state marker that followed BD onset. Clinically, BD-IDP polygenic risk scores were significantly associated with depressive symptoms, anxiety, and suicide risk. Mediation analysis further indicated that depressive and anxiety symptoms statistically mediated the relationship between BD-IDP PRS and suicide risk. Moreover, PRS-PheWAS identified 135 significant associations with metabolic phenotypes, highlighting a psycho-metabolic nexus in BD.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings reveal associations between polygenicity and distinct BD brain patterns and clinical profiles. We identified ancestry-specific causal variants and bidirectional BD-IDP relationships. PRS associations with depressive symptoms, anxiety, suicide risk, and metabolic phenotypes highlight precision medicine potential for BD.

RevDate: 2026-10-24

Li Y, Tan X, Tan M, et al (2026)

Modeling the Selective and Lossy Nature of Visual Processing Bridges the Discrepancy in Noninvasive Neural Decoding.

International journal of neural systems [Epub ahead of print].

Noninvasive neural decoding seeks to infer visual stimuli from brain recordings, such as EEG and MEG, thereby providing a computational approach for probing human visual information processing. Current contrastive learning approaches align brain signals with image embeddings from pretrained neural networks. However, these methods often struggle with the intrinsic visual-brain discrepancy arising from systematic representational gaps and noise because brain signals are treated as direct, lossless replicas of visual inputs. To alleviate this mismatch, the proposed framework accounts for the selective and information-compressive characteristics of biological vision. On the visual side, the framework incorporates an adaptive, context-aware visual calibration mechanism, where multilevel blurred representations are dynamically fused under the guidance of structural salience to refine visual features toward the brain's abstraction level. On the brain-signal side, a robust and lightweight neural encoder is used to mitigate inter-channel and temporal variations. Experiments on standard EEG and MEG benchmarks show that the proposed method achieves strong brain-to-image retrieval performance. Our modeling hypothesis, supported by retrieval behavior, suggests that computational representations aligning with salient and structurally meaningful content better match macroscopic neural responses than fine-grained image details. These findings suggest that incorporating the lossy and selective characteristics of human visual processing into computational models is important for advancing noninvasive neural decoding and understanding brain-machine alignment. The source codes are available at SLVP.

RevDate: 2026-10-25
CmpDate: 2026-10-24

Wu XL, Xia XQ, Ye CQ, et al (2026)

Case Report: An MDT-guided multimodal protocol for large-area stroke plateau - integrating neuromodulation with multimodal assessment.

Frontiers in rehabilitation sciences, 7:1803123.

OBJECTIVE: This case report investigates the feasibility and potential value of an individualized precision rehabilitation protocol for large-area stroke, integrating multimodal neuromodulation under the guidance of a multidisciplinary team (MDT) and dynamic assessment.

METHODS: A 38-year-old male with right hemiplegia and global aphasia following large left hemispheric infarction underwent an 8-month MDT-managed program. A closed-loop "assess-decide-intervene-re-assess" framework was implemented, featuring periodic multimodal evaluations (clinical scales, DTI, fMRI, EEG, 3D gait analysis). The intervention dynamically combined conventional therapy with staged neuromodulation: repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) for aphasia and intermittent Theta Burst Stimulation (iTBS) for motor disorder, Brain-Computer Interface (BCI)-robotic training and task-oriented Virtual Reality (VR) for upper limb function, and biomechanical correction with custom insoles based on gait analysis.

RESULTS: Notable functional improvements were observed: LOTCA increased by 16 points, CRRCAE subscale improved by 60%-90%, FMA increased from 20 to 56, FMA-B reached 12, and MBI improved from 40 to 91. Neuroimaging revealed increased fractional anisotropy (FA) in the corpus callosum and right corticospinal tract, and elevated ALFF/ReHo in right frontal-temporal areas. Event-related desynchronization (ERD) decreased during BCI training, and gait parameters improved.

CONCLUSION: In this patient with large-area stroke who showed limited response to conventional rehabilitation, an MDT-guided, dynamically adjusted multimodal intervention was temporally associated with concurrent recovery across cognitive, language, motor, and daily living domains. The concomitant neural changes suggest possible trans-hemispheric network reorganization. These observations are hypothesis-generating and, while limited by the single-case design, provide a preliminary rationale for future investigations into precision neurorehabilitation approaches in similar complex cases.

CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: ChiCTR2300069203.

RevDate: 2026-10-24
CmpDate: 2026-10-24

Yang S, Sun Q, Mo H, et al (2026)

Correction: Perioperative management for invasive brain-computer interface implantation under surgical navigation in a patient with traumatic spinal cord injury: a case report.

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 20:1995038.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2026.1892331.].

RevDate: 2026-10-23

Dornan TN, Dantas PT, Morgan DL, et al (2026)

DNA metabarcoding reveals the trophic ecology of Critically Endangered juvenile green sawfish (Pristis zijsron) and sympatric predators.

Marine environmental research, 223:108466 pii:S0141-1136(26)00635-5 [Epub ahead of print].

North-western Australia is home to many of Australia's rare and threatened elasmobranchs. Basic ecological data is still lacking for many of these species, including empirical dietary information. DNA metabarcoding was performed on cloacal swabs to obtain the first empirical insights into the trophic ecology of the IUCN Critically Endangered green sawfish (Pristis zijsron). Additionally, qualitative insights were gained into the piscivorous diet of sicklefin lemon sharks (Negaprion acutidens), nervous sharks (Carcharhinus cautus), and blacktip sharks (Carcharhinus tilstoni/C. limbatus). A total of 20 teleosts were identified as prey for green sawfish, with sampling effort covering an estimated 77.9% of their total piscivorous diet. An ontogenetic dietary shift in green sawfish was identified, shifting from glassfish (Ambassis sp.) to hairback herring (Nematalosa come) and sharksuckers (Echeneis naucrates) as individuals grew from ∼800 to 2500 mm total length. Of all co-occurring predators, green sawfish had the greatest piscivorous dietary overlap with sicklefin lemon sharks, and the most common prey among sampled elasmobranch species were hairback herring and giant trevally (Caranx ignobilis). This research vastly expands our understanding of the trophic ecology of green sawfish in Australia, particularly at the critical juvenile age class. The results highlight how the complex intraspecific and interspecific dietary interactions of green sawfish require holistic, ecosystem-based approaches to effectively conserve this highly threatened species.

RevDate: 2026-10-23

Kokorin K, Mu J, Grayden DB, et al (2026)

Decoding attempted handwritten characters based on temporal endovascular neural features.

Journal of neural engineering [Epub ahead of print].

We evaluated temporal neural features for motor decoding using a minimally-invasive endovascular brain-computer interfaces (BCI). We hypothesised that relatively long compound movements generate distinct patterns of neural activity that are encoded by temporal features. Approach. A single participant implanted with the Stentrode endovascular BCI attempted to hand write English characters, which were then classified offline and online based on the recorded brain activity. The input to the model was a one-dimensional trajectory of high-gamma power, summed across all channels to isolate the effect of temporal information on decoding performance. Main results. A small number of classes across multiple months was reliably decoded, showing that temporal decoding could identify stable patterns of brain activity associated with each handwriting movement. Across four online sessions, where each session contained 20-30 trials/character and 80-180 rest trials, the best performing (3-class) model achieved a mean rest recall of 87% as well as character recall and precision of 65% and 59%, respectively. These results showed that attempted handwriting can be used in an online multi-class selection BCI and that temporal neural features capture the internal user context. Linear warping of trials to minimise temporal variability, where all trials were modified to have the same duration, led to significantly increased decoding performance compared to classifying raw trials. Significance. The results from our participant showed that decoding brain activity based on the differences between feature trajectories across time can be an effective strategy for discriminating different movements. Therefore, BCIs may be able to use temporal information to reduce their spatial footprint, likely making them less invasive. Overall, our study shows that further investigation of temporal decoding across multiple participants and other recording modalities is warranted. Strategies for automatic temporal alignment are likely to further improve the performance of these systems.

RevDate: 2026-10-23

Hart DM, Polichtchouk S, M Dannhauer (2026)

Transformer networks are robust learners of source localization for EEG measurements.

Journal of neural engineering [Epub ahead of print].

EEG source localization is an ill-posed inverse problem complicated by measurement noise, electrode dropout from sensor miscalibration, and variability in the number of active sources. Classical methods such as eLORETA and LCMV beamforming impose regularization assumptions that degrade under realistic noise conditions and do not naturally extend to multi-source scenarios. Recent neural network approaches improve localization accuracy but are typically trained and evaluated under idealized conditions that limit their applicability to real-world EEG acquisition. This work aims to develop and evaluate a source localization model that generalizes across the noise levels, source counts, and electrode configurations encountered in clinical and experimental EEG settings. Approach: We present a transformer-based model for single- and multi-source EEG localization. Hundreds of thousands of simulated EEG measurements are generated from known source locations, spanning a range of noise levels, source counts, and electrode dropout configurations, to train and evaluate the model. We establish a systematic evaluation framework that explicitly factors in source region density, signal-to-noise ratio, and electrode availability, and benchmark the transformer against classical (eLORETA, LCMV beamforming) and deep learning baselines across these conditions. We additionally conduct a thorough ablation study on network architecture and training pipeline design. Main results: Across all tested conditions, the transformer consistently outperforms classical and deep learning approaches, with improvements as high as 12\,mm in mean localization error (MLE) for multi-source scenarios under high noise. Additionally, when number of sources is unknown, the transformer can correctly predict the number and location of sources and drastically out perform the threshold-based approach (e.g an F1 Score of 68\% vs 12\% when simulated at 25\% noise). The multiembedding transformers maintains reasonable performance under conditions such as electrode dropout and increased noise. Significance: By explicitly modeling the noise, electrode dropout, and multi-source variability that characterize real EEG acquisition, this work addresses a key gap between benchmark performance and experimental utility in EEG source localization. These results lay the groundwork for more robust localization techniques applicable to real EEG data, with potential relevance to applications such as brain-computer interfaces. The data and code for this work will be made publicly available to support further development and benchmarking in the field.

RevDate: 2026-10-24
CmpDate: 2026-10-23

Zheng Q, Wen J, Yuan W, et al (2026)

A clinically interpretable model for Parkinson's disease: insights from complementary MRI modalities.

Brain communications, 8(5):fcag383.

Accurate identification of Parkinson's disease may remain challenging in certain clinical scenarios, highlighting the need for a clinical decision-support model based on complementary MRI modalities. The case-control study included 462 participants, split into training [247 Parkinson's disease, 122 normal controls (NC)] and testing (60 Parkinson's disease, 33 NC) cohorts to construct and validate a clinical decision-support model. We employed least absolute shrinkage and selection operator and logistic regression analysis to develop the model utilizing quantitative susceptibility mapping, arterial spin labelling and T1-weighted images. The model was assessed for calibration, discrimination and clinical utility, with individual predicted scores correlated to Parkinson's disease clinical symptoms. The model's performance was also evaluated independently in multiple system atrophy, progressive supranuclear palsy and essential tremor, with DeLong test comparisons. The model was trained in the training cohort (Parkinson's disease: 61.39 ± 8.06 years old, 134 males; NC: 61.29 ± 7.56 years old, 54 males) with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.842 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.798-0.883] and 0.771 (95% CI 0.657-0.870) in the testing cohort, whose clinical utility was confirmed. The predicted scores were positively correlated with Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale II (P = 0.034) and III (P = 0.015), while negatively correlated with the Purdue Pegboard total (P = 0.010) and assembly scores (P = 0.007). When discriminating each disease group from NC, the model's performance to identify multiple system atrophy and progressive supranuclear palsy with AUC values of 0.881 and 0.895 was superior than essential tremor with an AUC of 0.709 before false discovery rate correction (multiple system atrophy-NC versus essential tremor-NC: P = 0.041; progressive supranuclear palsy-NC versus essential tremor-NC: P = 0.010). The model based on complementary MRI modalities was an objective clinical decision-support measure for Parkinson's disease with potential applications in other parkinsonisms (multiple system atrophy, progressive supranuclear palsy).

RevDate: 2026-10-23

Cai X, Liu Y, X Sheng (2026)

Engineering Bidirectional Neuromodulation: A Review of Neural Excitation and Inhibition Technologies.

Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.) pii:e75480 [Epub ahead of print].

Neuromodulation provides a means to perturb neural activity for investigating nervous system function and treating neurological disorders. Advances in stimulation strategies, molecular tools, functional materials and neural interfaces have progressively expanded the precision and versatility of such interventions. Yet neural activity can require regulation in opposing directions across different cellular, circuit and pathological states, motivating bidirectional neuromodulation that can both enhance and suppress neural activity. In this review, we examine the mechanisms and technologies that enable such bidirectional control across electrical, optical, thermal, mechanical, magnetic and chemical modalities. We compare these approaches in terms of spatiotemporal performance, penetration depth, specificity and safety, and examine the materials, transduction strategies and device architectures used to implement bidirectional neural control. We further discuss the applications of bidirectional neuromodulation in neuroscience research and the treatment of neurological disorders. Finally, we discuss the technical challenges and future directions toward more precise, independent and integrated bidirectional control, including its extension to closed-loop adaptive regulation.

RevDate: 2026-10-23
CmpDate: 2026-10-23

Zhao G, Feng Z, Z Wang (2026)

Adaptive local temporal weighting for short-window EEG-based SSVEP recognition using FB-eTRCA.

Science progress, 109(4):368504261501367.

To improve short-window SSVEP recognition, we integrated adaptive temporal local weighting (ATLW) with filter-bank ensemble task-related component analysis (FB-eTRCA). ATLW estimates local discriminability from training trials, converts window scores into sample weights, and applies the training-derived weights to training and test trials within each cross-validation fold. Experiments were conducted on two public 40-target SSVEP datasets: the Benchmark dataset containing 35 subjects and six blocks, and the BETA database containing 70 subjects and four blocks. Seven observation windows ranging from 0.2 to 1.4 s were evaluated using subject-specific leave-one-block-out validation, with six folds for the Benchmark dataset and four folds for the BETA database. On the Benchmark dataset, only the 0.2-s accuracy gain remained significant after Holm correction (44.79% vs 44.07%; adjusted p = 0.0300); other windows were nonsignificant. On the Benchmark dataset, ablation analysis showed that adaptive weighting was more stable than fixed temporal weighting. After Holm correction, eTRCA+ATLW significantly outperformed eTRCA at 0.4 s (gain: 0.86 percentage points; adjusted p = 0.0023), but not at 0.2 s, supporting transferability to another TRCA-based decoder. EEGNet and BiLSTM were included as representative CNN and RNN baselines; both performed below the TRCA-family methods under the present subject-specific limited-calibration protocol. On the BETA database, FB-eTRCA+ATLW remained close to FB-eTRCA across all seven observation windows without BETA-specific parameter retuning, but no paired difference was statistically significant. These findings indicate that ATLW is a lightweight temporal refinement that can be applied to more than one TRCA-based decoder. Its measurable benefit may depend on SSVEP signal quality and the amount of available subject-specific calibration data. Accuracy increased with longer windows, whereas the information transfer rate peaked at 0.6 s on the Benchmark dataset. Therefore, no observation window was optimal for both accuracy and communication speed.

RevDate: 2026-10-23

Shen Q, Eliseyev A, Kansara V, et al (2026)

Clinically unresponsive patients with acute brain injury activate a brain-computer interface.

Brain : a journal of neurology pii:8931697 [Epub ahead of print].

Brain activation to verbal commands can be detected by EEG in clinically unresponsive patients. These patients with cognitive motor dissociation (CMD) are unable to communicate with the environment despite preserved consciousness. Advanced brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are promising to support motor function in patients with motor neuron disease or spinal cord injury. Our primary objective was to determine if clinically unresponsive patients can control a self-paced, one-way BCI early after acute brain injury. Secondarily, we assessed the association of BCI control with short- and long-term outcomes. We conducted a prospective single-centre cohort study in 41 clinically unresponsive, critically ill and acutely brain injured patients, as well as in a convenience sample of 8 healthy volunteers and 22 conscious critically ill patients. The self-paced BCI analysed EEG in real time and modulated frequency and pitch of a tone that patients controlled by attempting a motor task: patients were provided with instructions 'to make the beep sound faster, keep opening and closing your right hand' alternating with 'to make the beep sound slower, stop opening and closing your right hand'. CMD was detected by applying machine learning to EEG recorded while patients listened to motor commands. Clinical outcomes were recovery of consciousness by hospital discharge, assessed with the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised, and recovery of functional independence at 12 months, defined as a Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended score of 4 or higher (denoting the ability to function independently for 8 h or more). Additionally, we invited conscious patients as well as family members of conscious and clinically unresponsive patients to complete a survey on perceived utility and challenges associated with the BCI. In this study, 13 clinically unresponsive patients (32%) achieved BCI control and 8 of 41 (20%) were CMD-positive. All healthy volunteers and nine conscious patients (41%) were able to control the BCI. Median signal delay for BCI control was 49.8 [interquartile range (IQR) 39.9-75.6] seconds for clinically unresponsive patients, 17.1 (IQR 7.8-19.9) for conscious patients and 15.5 (IQR 12.9-21.2) for healthy volunteers. In the group of 41 clinically unresponsive patients, 4 of 13 patients with (31%) and 1 of 28 without BCI control (4%) recovered clinical consciousness at hospital discharge [odds ratio (OR) 21.2; 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.3-930.7]. At 12 months, 6 of 13 patients with (46%) and 2 of 28 without BCI control (7%) recovered functional independence (OR 9.9; 95% CI 1.8-81.6). None of the patients that were unable to control the BCI and were CMD-negative recovered. Patients with BCI control had shorter times to recovery of functional independence by 12 months than those who did not (hazards ratio 6.0; 95% CI 1.2-30.6). All respondents of the BCI survey (n = 37) expressed strong support for the potential future use of BCI devices. These results suggest that BCI control is a strong predictor of outcomes following acute brain injury and provide initial evidence that a bedside, EEG-based BCI system might permit bidirectional communication in critically ill unresponsive patients.

RevDate: 2026-10-23
CmpDate: 2026-10-23

Zhu Y, Shi Y, Wu J, et al (2026)

Decoding motor imagery EEG signals by a deep learning network integrating multiscale filtering and temporal-channel attention mechanisms.

PloS one, 21(10):e0361026.

Due to their low signal-to-noise ratio and non-stationarity, accurately classifying EEG signals is still one of the main hindrances that limit the real-world applications of a brain-computer interface (BCI). Deep learning (DL) is a potential method for addressing the problem. However, how to create a suitable DL network for motor imagery (MI)-based BCIs poses severe challenges in the case of insufficient training data. In this paper, a DL network based on multiscale convolutional neural network (CNN) and temporal and channel attention mechanisms is proposed for decoding MI tasks. Temporal and spatial features are extracted by four parallel CNN branches, each of which is followed by a Transformer block for learning the global correlations of local time features. The outputs from the four Transformer blocks are concatenated along channel dimension and then input into a channel attention module for channel fusion. The subsequent feature map is classified by a CNN, which replaces the commonly used fully connected layer for reducing computational complexity. The proposed network was evaluated on three publicly available BCI datasets and compared with five state-of-the-art DL networks. The training data sets are augmented using the approach segmentation and reconstruction. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed network achieved an average accuracy of 80.21% on Dataset 1 (4-class tasks), 90.19% on Dataset 2 (2-class tasks), and 97.32% on Dataset 3 (4-class tasks), surpassing the strongest baselines FBCNet on Dataset 1, MSFBCNN on Dataset 2 and MSFBCNN on Dataset 3 by 2.59%, 1.27%, and 1.99% respectively. The network effectively decoded the MI-based EEG signals, providing a potential method for BCI applications.

RevDate: 2026-10-23
CmpDate: 2026-10-23

Wu Y, Chang T, Chen S, et al (2026)

Biophysically constrained learning from healthy neural priors improves motor decoding in pathological cortical networks.

Science advances, 12(43):eadx5564.

High-performance brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) rely on stable neural representations, yet brain functional impairments inherently disrupt canonical encoding, creating a fundamental decoding paradox. Conventional data-driven approaches struggle to bridge this gap because of pathological data scarcity and heterogeneity. Here, we propose to leverage healthy neural priors and introduce Pathology-Aware Consensus Training (PACT), a paradigm embedding biophysical constraints into healthy neural recordings to guide neural decoding. In a gesture classification task using high-density electrocorticography from patients with gliomas infiltrating the motor cortex, PACT improved the accuracy by more than 10%, effectively restoring the distorted semantic geometry of motor commands and realigning them with healthy canonical representations (correlation increase: r = 0.66 to r = 0.94). Mechanistically, PACT induced an emergent "inverse weighting" strategy: The model autonomously suppresses high-power pathological noise while reanchoring spatial attention to functional compensatory regions. This study provides a proof of concept for improving decoding in compromised networks by harnessing healthy neural dynamics, laying the theoretical foundation for future BCI deployments in clinical populations.

RevDate: 2026-10-23

Wang Z, Tang Q, Li K, et al (2026)

A vagal gut-brain axis for feeding-induced gastric secretion in mice.

Neuron pii:S0896-6273(26)00743-9 [Epub ahead of print].

Feeding begins with food-seeking and ends with nutrient absorption and waste elimination. Although meal-related sensory cues shape feeding behavior, how they engage neural circuits to control digestion remains unclear. We dissected vagal gut-brain-gut pathways mediating meal-induced gastric secretion. Stomach-innervating vagal afferents were necessary and sufficient for secretion. Among them, Glp1r[+] and Sst[+] neurons drove acid, pepsin, and gastrin secretion, whereas Oxtr[+] and Vip[+] neurons had little effect. Piezo2 was expressed in Glp1r[+] mechanosensory afferents, and conditional deletion of Piezo2 attenuated distension-evoked secretion. On the efferent limb, genetically defined vagal motor-neuron subsets showed distinct secretory effects: Cck[+] neurons broadly increased acid, pepsin, and gastrin, whereas Grp[+] neurons preferentially affected acid secretion. Finally, enteric circuit dissection revealed modular output control, with Calb2[+] neurons driving secretion with minimal motility effects. Together, these results define a cell-type-resolved vagal-enteric architecture for gastric control.

RevDate: 2026-10-23

Washizawa Y (2026)

Training Free Signal Enhancement by Random Sampling for Steady State Visual Evoked Potential BCI.

Biomedical physics & engineering express [Epub ahead of print].

The steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) is widely used for electroencephalography (EEG) based brain computer interfaces (BCIs). In order to determine the target commands for SSVEP-BCIs, deep neural networks have been widely used. However, learning-based approaches require training data, and the upfront costs are high. This study proposes a training free signal enhancement method for SSVEP-BCIs. The proposed method enhances SSVEP components by repeatedly performing random sampling and pasting of EEG signals. Our experiments using synthesized signals and open benchmark datasets demonstrate the performance of the proposed method. The proposed method outperforms conventional methods for all signal lengths, demonstrating an improvement in information transfer rate of up to 11.30 bit/min. .

RevDate: 2026-10-22

Bhagat V, Yadav RK, Ghosh S, et al (2026)

EEG-Based Characterization of Cortical Dynamics during Graded Resistance Exercise.

IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics, PP: [Epub ahead of print].

Understanding how brain activity varies during voluntary movement under different resistance conditions may provide insights into neural responses associated with physical demands and inform the development of neurorehabilitation strategies. In this study, we investigated changes in neural activity associated with increasing resistance levels during unilateral bicep curl movement. Ten healthy participants performed bicep curls under five resistance conditions while their cortical activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). Movement-related cortical potentials (MRCPs), power spectral density (PSD) topographies, nonparametric spatiotemporal cluster-based permutation tests and linear mixed-effects models (LMMs) were used to characterize EEG differences across resistance conditions. Differences in MR-CPs and frequency-specific power spectral density (PSD) patterns were observed across resistance conditions, with significant spatiotemporal clusters identified during pre-movement, peak contraction, and movement execution phases. A Triplet Temporal Convolutional Network (TTCN) was also employed to learn latent representations from these EEG signals, and its discriminative capability was evaluated using a k-nearest neighbors (KNN) classifier. The learned embeddings showed separation between the resistance conditions, with classification errors occurring primarily between neighboring conditions. Using a within subject leave-one-trial-out (LOTO) evaluation strategy, the TTCN-KNN framework achieved accuracy of 97.2%. Furthermore, subject-independent evaluation were conducted using a leave-one-subject-out (LOSO) approach, achieving a maximum accuracy of 93.0%. These findings suggest that EEG signals contain discriminative information for distinguishing the resistance conditions in both within-subject and subject-independent settings, providing preliminary in sights for future EEG-based monitoring of motor effort and adaptive brain-machine interface applications.

RevDate: 2026-10-23
CmpDate: 2026-10-22

Kaur B, Middha S, Ali A, et al (2026)

An attention-enhanced hybrid CNN-BiLSTM framework for multiclass epileptic seizure recognition using EEG signals.

Frontiers in computational neuroscience, 20:1949040.

INTRODUCTION: Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal classification plays a pivotal role in brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and the diagnosis of neurological disorders. However, the non-stationary, non-linear, and low signal-to-noise ratio characteristics of EEG signals make accurate feature extraction challenging. Conventional deep learning approaches often struggle to simultaneously capture localized transient patterns, deep temporal dependencies, and long-range contextual relationships within EEG signals.

METHODS: To address these challenges, an optimized end-to-end hybrid deep learning framework, termed CNN-BiLSTM-MHSA, is proposed for multiclass epileptic seizure recognition. The architecture sequentially integrates a multilayer one-dimensional Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) for localized feature extraction, a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) network for capturing forward and backward temporal dependencies, and a Multi-Head Self-Attention (MHSA) mechanism for dynamically emphasizing discriminative neurological events. Robust preprocessing includes Butterworth bandpass filtering, Z-score normalization, and data augmentation using Gaussian noise injection and amplitude scaling. The framework was evaluated on the UCI/Kaggle Epileptic Seizure Recognition dataset comprising 11,500 EEG segments distributed across five classes.

RESULTS: The proposed framework achieved an overall accuracy of 98.83%, precision of 98.95%, recall (sensitivity) of 98.84%, F1-score of 98.90%, specificity of 99.71%, balanced accuracy of 98.84%, ROC-AUC of 99.80%, and PR-AUC of 99.72%. Class-wise accuracies exceeded 99% for most categories, with one seizure class achieving perfect recognition. Comparative evaluation further demonstrated that the proposed framework outperformed several recent state-of-the-art EEG seizure classification methods.

DISCUSSION: The superior performance can be attributed to the complementary representation capabilities of the hybrid architecture. CNN layers effectively learn localized signal patterns, BiLSTM captures bidirectional temporal dependencies, and MHSA enhances the representation of long-range contextual relationships by assigning greater importance to informative temporal regions. The combination of robust preprocessing and data augmentation further contributes to improved generalization and classification reliability.

RevDate: 2026-10-22
CmpDate: 2026-10-22

Li X, Ni H, Cui G, et al (2026)

Impact of motor guided imagery therapy on stroke patients with pain symptoms: a three-level meta-analysis and systematic review of randomized controlled trials.

Frontiers in neurology, 17:1920523.

BACKGROUND: Post-stroke pain is a common and intractable complication that hinders neurorehabilitation progress. Motor Guided Imagery (MGI), an emerging rehabilitation technique based on brain-computer interaction principles, has shown potential in relieving post-stroke pain, yet high-quality evidence on its multi-dimensional efficacy remains insufficient. This study aimed to systematically evaluate the effects of MGI on pain, sensorimotor function, sleep quality, life status, and psychological mood in stroke patients using a three-level meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to quantitatively assess the therapeutic effects of Motor Guided Imagery for stroke-related pain and explore potential intervention moderators using a three-level meta-analysis framework.

METHODS: Eight Chinese and English databases were searched from inception to June 29, 2025, to collect randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of MGI for stroke patients with pain. A three-level random-effects model was adopted to pool Hedges' g effect sizes, accompanied by heterogeneity testing, moderator analysis, influence analysis, and publication bias assessment. Influence-based outlier detection was implemented; analyses retaining all effect-size observations were treated as the primary main analysis, while outlier-removed analyses were reported only as supplementary sensitivity checks.

RESULTS: Motor-guided imagery training significantly relieved pain (g = -0.524, 95% CI -0.779 to -0.269, p = 0.0006; negative Hedges' g indicates clinical improvement for this outcome) and improved sleep quality (g = -1.658, 95% CI -2.115 to -1.201, p < 0.001; negative Hedges' g indicates clinical improvement for this outcome) in stroke patients. Meanwhile, it significantly enhanced motor function (g = 1.395, 95% CI 0.963 to 1.826, p < 0.001), life status (g = 1.757, 95% CI 0.966 to 2.549, p = 0.0012), and psychological-emotional status (g = 1.729, 95% CI 1.045 to 2.413, p = 0.0002); positive Hedges' g indicates clinical improvement for the latter three outcomes. Moderator analysis indicated that acute-phase intervention (≤4 weeks) and high-frequency regimens (>5 sessions/week) tended to produce better analgesic effects, while age, gender, single-session duration, and pain location had no significant moderating effects.

CONCLUSION: MGI may produce beneficial rehabilitation effects that can alleviate post-stroke pain and synergistically improve motor function, sleep, daily-living ability, and psychological state of stroke patients. Exploratory subgroup trends indicated potentially larger effects for early implementation within the acute phase and high-frequency short-duration regimens. However, these observations should be interpreted as hypothesis-generating clues given non-significant overall moderator tests. Further high-quality research is required to confirm these findings.

REGISTRATION: The systematic review protocol was retrospectively registered with PROSPERO under registration ID CRD420261278812, after literature search and full-text screening had been completed.

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/view/CRD420261278812; identifier: CRD420261278812.

RevDate: 2026-10-22

Zhang K, Lin J, Tong P, et al (2026)

Realizing Ultrahigh Polarization and Excellent Thermal Stability in Piezoceramics via Defect-Stress Engineering.

Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) [Epub ahead of print].

Large polarization is critical for improving the piezoelectric and actuation performance of ferroelectric materials. As a promising lead-free candidate, BiFeO3-BaTiO3 inherits the excellent polarization capability of BiFeO3. However, the actual polarization achieved in its ceramics remains far below the theoretical predictions. In this work, we propose a novel defect-stress engineering strategy to enhance the polarization substantially. By intentionally introducing A-site vacancies into 0.70BiFeO3-0.30BaTiO3 ceramics, combined with quenching treatment, localized stress-concentration regions are formed within the ceramic matrix. This strategy successfully achieves a remarkable increase in polarization displacement and promotes the formation of polar nanoregions. Under an electric field of 60 kV/cm, the optimized ceramics exhibit a high remanent polarization of 46.40 µC/cm[2], which is significantly superior to that of most reported lead-free counterparts. Moreover, the unipolar strain shows only a 13% variation from room temperature to 180°C, demonstrating excellent thermal stability. This work confirms that defect-stress engineering is an effective approach to enhance polarization in bulk lead-free ferroelectrics and provides a new framework for developing lead-free ferroelectric materials with both high polarization and superior temperature stability.

RevDate: 2026-10-22
CmpDate: 2026-10-22

Bao C, R Hu (2026)

Integrated transcriptomic analysis identifies an AKT1-associated metabolic-inflammatory signature in osteoporosis.

Clinical and experimental medicine, 26(1):.

Osteoporosis is a significant global health challenge, and low bone mineral density (Low-BMD) is a major clinical feature and risk indicator of osteoporosis. Fatty acid metabolism has been increasingly implicated in bone remodeling and inflammatory regulation, but the transcriptomic links between fatty acid metabolism and immune-inflammatory alterations in Low-BMD remain unclear. We integrated three GEO datasets, including 60 High-BMD controls and 59 Low-BMD subjects. Differential expression analysis, immune infiltration analysis, NMF clustering, WGCNA, pseudotime analysis, and machine learning were performed to identify fatty acid metabolism-related genes associated with Low-BMD. AKT1 knockdown was used to evaluate its potential role in regulating inflammatory mediators. Eighteen fatty acid metabolism-related differentially expressed genes were identified between High-BMD and Low-BMD samples and were enriched in inflammatory, immune, and osteoclast-related pathways. NMF clustering revealed two Low-BMD molecular subtypes with distinct metabolic and immune-inflammatory features. Machine learning identified an AKT1-containing diagnostic signature with good predictive performance, and AKT1 was positively correlated with inflammatory response scores and inflammatory markers. Quantitative Real-time PCR confirmed Akt1 knockdown, and ELISA showed reduced IL-6, TNF-α, and IL-1β secretion in MC3T3-E1 cells. AKT1 may serve as a fatty acid metabolism-related candidate gene associated with immune-inflammatory remodeling and inflammatory mediator regulation in Low-BMD. These findings suggest a potential AKT1-associated metabolic-inflammatory regulatory relationship and provide candidate biomarkers for future validation in osteoporosis-related bone loss.

RevDate: 2026-10-23

Mandal R, Prabhakaran GS, Kowshik AV, et al (2026)

A Sensitive BLE-Enabled Wearable fNIRS Biosensor for Real-Time Monitoring and Mapping of Task-Evoked Oxygen Influxes During On-Screen Cognitive Tasks.

IEEE transactions on bio-medical engineering, PP: [Epub ahead of print].

OBJECTIVE: To develop and validate a compact Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-enabled wearable functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) device for real-time hemodynamic monitoring and proposes a task-evoked metric for identifying transient oxygenation events during cognitive engagement.

METHOD: We designed a four-channel wearable fNIRS biosensor that integrates optical sensing, signal acquisition, and wireless transmission into a compact, cable-free platform using off-the-shelf electronic components. The device was characterized through optical power linearity, ADC voltage input, pulsed light acquisition, and signal-to-noise ratio analysis. Its performance was validated using forearm vascular occlusion and breath-hold experiments, followed by cortical recordings during breath-hold tasks, finger tapping, dynamic visual stimulation, and a screen-based spatial learning and memory task. We further formulated task-evoked instances of differential oxygen influx (tEIDO), computed from the instantaneous differential response between $\Delta$[HbO] and $\Delta$[Hb], as a hemodynamic index of task-locked neurovascular activity.

RESULT: The device reliably detected expected oxy- and deoxy-hemoglobin changes during vascular and breath-hold validation experiments and captured task-evoked responses over motor, visual, and prefrontal cortices. The tEIDO metric identified transient differential oxygenation events during visual stimulation and revealed task-aligned oxygenation dynamics. During spatial navigation, differential oxygenation maps showed hemodynamic modulation around the target region only after memory acquisition.

SIGNIFICANCE: The proposed BLE-enabled fNIRS platform, together with tEIDO, offers a compact and sensitive approach for untethered real-time cortical hemodynamic monitoring, with potential applications in mobile neuroimaging, neuroergonomics, cognitive-state monitoring, and brain-computer interface systems.

RevDate: 2026-10-22
CmpDate: 2026-10-22

Nagarajan SS, P Khanna (2026)

Optimizing learning for control of human-machine interfaces.

Neuron, 114(20):3734-3735.

Human-machine interfaces, such as augmented reality devices, hand prostheses, and brain-computer interfaces, are increasingly being used in neurorehabilitation. In this issue of Neuron, Vassiliadis et al.[1] examine the interaction between closed-loop continuous reinforcement and sensory feedback in learning of human-machine interface control.

RevDate: 2026-10-22

Zhang YY, Hu MT, Xie SZ, et al (2026)

A GABAergic preoptic-raphe circuit mediates paradoxical coupling of anxiety and social preference after comparative social deficit.

Neuron pii:S0896-6273(26)00742-7 [Epub ahead of print].

Social disconnection is a major risk factor for anxiety disorders, the most prevalent mental illnesses worldwide, yet its neural substrates remain unclear. Here, we establish a comparative social deficit (CSD) model in adult male mice that induces a paradoxical phenotype of increased anxiety-like behavior together with heightened social preference, a pattern conceptually similar to human loneliness. Mechanistically, CSD increases the excitability of medial preoptic GABAergic (mPOA[Gad2]) neurons, which bidirectionally regulate CSD-induced behavioral changes. Transcriptomic and electrophysiological analyses identify downregulation of the Kv4.3 potassium channel (Kcnd3) as a molecular driver of mPOA[Gad2] hyperexcitability. Furthermore, mPOA[Gad2] neurons exert monosynaptic inhibition onto dorsal raphe serotonergic (DRN[5-HT]) neurons. This inhibitory projection, strengthened by CSD, mediates CSD-induced behavioral effects. These findings define a molecular and circuit mechanism by which social disconnection remodels mPOA-DRN interactions to drive the paradoxical coupling of anxiety and elevated social preference, providing a translational framework for understanding loneliness-related psychiatric vulnerability.

RevDate: 2026-10-22

Yang T (2026)

ACF-Net: Design of an adaptive cross-modal fusion network for cross-subject wearable EEG-EMG gesture recognition.

Journal of neural engineering [Epub ahead of print].

Cross-subject gesture recognition in wearable brain-computer interfaces is constrained by four structural deficiencies: symmetric cross-modal attention discarding cortical precedence over muscular execution, priors confined to post hoc analysis, invariance anchored on unimodal features, and adaptation requiring labelled target-domain data. This study closes these gaps by embedding corticomuscular coupling directly into the network architecture rather than recovering it from data. Approach: ACF-Net is a four-stage pipeline embedding neurophysiological priors directly into fusion. The corticomuscular coherence prior injection layer (CMC-Prior) encodes time-lagged coherence and phase-locking values for every electroencephalography (EEG)-electromyography (EMG) channel pair as a learnable bias tensor. Granger-causality-inspired directed cross-modal attention (GC-Attn) uses a causal mask allowing only EEG-to-EMG influence within 30-120 ms. The fused embedding is projected onto a symmetric positive definite manifold with log-Euclidean triplet loss. Physiology-consistent test-time adaptation (PC-TTA) updates only batch-normalisation affine parameters, using EEG-precedes-EMG as unlabelled self-supervision, eliminating labelled target data. Leave-one-subject-out validation on WAY-EEG-GAL (12 participants) and WEE-Ges (20 participants, three days) used fold-wise priors and Holm-corrected Wilcoxon tests. Main results: ACF-Net reached 87.6% on WAY-EEG-GAL and 89.2% on WEE-Ges, exceeding the strongest baseline by 9.4 and 9.1 percentage points with all comparisons significant after correction. Ablation attributed gains of 6.3, 4.9, 3.4 and 1.8 percentage points to directed attention, prior injection, manifold embedding and test-time adaptation. Accuracy remained 77.5% under 20 mm simulated electrode displacement, adaptation reduced the cross-day loss from 6.8 to 2.1 percentage points, and a forward pass on an NVIDIA Jetson Nano took 32.4 ms within a 178 ms end-to-end response at 30.9 Hz. Significance: Learned coupling weights recovered central-to-forearm-extensor projection, and delays matched corticospinal conduction with motor-unit recruitment, suggesting physiological structure, not dataset-specific statistics. Yet healthy young adults, gel-based/semi-dry wired hardware, and simulated displacement make this methodological; clinical and wireless dry-electrode transfer remains unestablished.

RevDate: 2026-10-22

Podmore JJ, Radman M, Poli R, et al (2026)

Towards semantic brain-computer interfacing: The graded inventory of semantic triggers (GIST) paradigm.

Journal of neural engineering [Epub ahead of print].

Semantic Brain-Computer Interfaces (sBCIs) aim to decode conceptual information directly from neural activity, enabling more efficient and natural communication for individuals with severe motor impairments. However, existing approaches are often confounded by stimulus-driven perceptual processes and lack a reliable means of tagging the moment of concept formation. We introduce the Graded Inventory of Semantic Triggers (GIST), a novel electroencephalography (EEG) paradigm designed to elicit semantic retrieval from graded verbal clues with precise temporal alignment. Approach: EEG data were recorded from 14 participants performing the GIST task across three semantic categories (food, musical instruments, and body parts). Target neural activity was aligned to each participant's self-reported moment of semantic retrieval (spacebar press), enabling response-locked analysis. Here, we propose a staged framework where the first comprises a Conformer-based encoder trained on pooled data using a hybrid contrastive objective that combines instance-level consistency and cross-participant class alignment with domain-adversarial learning to reduce participant-specific information. In the second stage, the frozen encoder is transferred to a held-out participant whose data played no part in Stage 1, and a support vector machine is calibrated on that participant's own labelled items under a nested leave-one-item-out protocol. Results: Above-chance semantic decoding was achieved in all three pairwise tasks. Mean accuracies were 73.4% (Body vs. Food), 70.7% (Body vs. Music), and 68.2% (Food vs. Music). Participant-level permutation tests were significant in 9/11 participants for Body vs. Food and 8/11 for each of the other tasks (p < 0.05). The pre-response interval at [-1.5s, -0.5s] was the most discriminative. Significance: The GIST paradigm enables controlled elicitation and temporal alignment of semantic processing while reducing perceptual confounds. Combined with cross-participant representation pretraining and participant-specific calibration, the results demonstrate above-chance decoding of semantic categories from EEG in individuals excluded from representation learning, supporting the feasibility of sBCIs.

RevDate: 2026-10-22
CmpDate: 2026-10-22

Zheng ZW, ZY Wu (2026)

Preclinical models of Wilson's disease: From pathogenesis to clinical translation.

Zoological research, 47(6):1853-1864.

Wilson's disease (WD) is an autosomal recessive disorder of copper homeostasis caused by pathogenic ATP7B variants, leading predominantly to hepatic and neurological injury. Extensive heterogeneity in genotype, age at onset, clinical presentation, and treatment response complicates both diagnosis and therapeutic development, highlighting the need for reliable experimental models that reproduce distinct features of WD pathogenesis. This review critically evaluates animal models, conventional cell systems, induced pluripotent stem cell models, and organoids of WD, with an emphasis on the phenotypes reproduced, experimental strengths and limitations, and translational applications of each platform. Rodent models have been instrumental in defining mechanisms of hepatic copper accumulation and toxicity and remain widely used for preclinical therapeutic evaluation, but existing models do not adequately reproduce the neurological manifestations characteristic of human WD. Patient-derived cells and organoids provide complementary platforms for investigating mutation-specific pathobiology, individualized drug responses, and genome-editing strategies, although incomplete maturation, limited cellular complexity, and insufficient standardization remain important constraints. Future progress will depend on models that more faithfully capture neurological disease, greater use of humanized systems, improved physiological fidelity of organoids, and standardized criteria for phenotypic assessment. Integrating complementary models across the preclinical pipeline should strengthen mechanistic insight and accelerate development of precision therapies for WD.

RevDate: 2026-10-22
CmpDate: 2026-10-22

Yin L, Ye Y, Li Y, et al (2026)

[Discussion on the closed-loop regulation strategy for acupuncture "Deqi" based on brain-computer interface and its peripheral-central mechanisms].

Zhen ci yan jiu = Acupuncture research, 51(10):1354-1366.

It is held that "Deqi" is the key to the therapeutic effect of acupuncture, but its evaluation has long relied on subjective feelings and lacks objective biological indicators. In the present article, we systematically review the current research status of brain-computer interface (BCI) technology based on electroencephalogram (EEG) in analyzing the peripheral-cerebral neural mechanism of "Deqi", and further explore how to utilize the closed-loop regulation ability of BCI to actively induce and maintain the "Deqi" state. By integrating domestic and foreign literature, we analyzed the peripheral initiation mechanism and central response characteristics of "Deqi", and explored its application value of EEG-BCI in the objective identification and the construction of closed-loop feedback systems. Studies have demonstrated that EEG, with its millisecond-level time resolution, can capture the dynamic changes of neural oscillations during the "Deqi" process in real time. The feature decoding method based on machine learning further realizes the objective identification of the "Deqi" state, while the closed-loop feedback system constructed by BCI technology provides an innovative path for precise acupuncture treatment. However, this field still faces some challenges such as signal artifact interference, insufficient decoding accuracy, and inconsistent research paradigms. The deep integration of EEG-BCI with acupuncture medicine provides a key technical platform for decoding the scientific connotation of "Deqi" and active regulation. In the future, efforts should be made to develop dynamic network decoding technology, further deepen the research on peripheral-cerebral coupling mechanisms, and promote the transformation of the system towards intelligence and standardization.

RevDate: 2026-10-23
CmpDate: 2026-10-23

Kodama T, Kitai K, Mizomoto Y, et al (2026)

Graded multisensory neurofeedback via the iNems system for comprehensive upper limb recovery after stroke: a multiple baseline study.

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 20:1938622.

INTRODUCTION: Post-stroke upper-limb recovery remains challenging, especially in the presence of sensory impairments. Conventional brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are constrained by binary feedback, single-modality stimulation, and exclusion of patients with sensory deficits. We developed the Imagery Neurofeedback-based Multi-sensory System (iNems), a neurofeedback system that provides graded multisensory (visual and electrical) feedback based on ERD magnitude. This study validated iNems' efficacy in motor function, self-reported numbness, and cognitive functions using a multiple-baseline design (MBD).

METHODS: Four participants with post-stroke upper-limb motor and sensory impairments underwent a multiple baseline design. The baseline phase (phase A) used random feedback; the intervention (phase B) used adaptive iNems. iNems quantified motor intention via sensorimotor EEG event-related desynchronization (ERD) and delivered graded visual and electrical feedback. Primary outcomes were the Fugl-Meyer Assessment-Upper Extremity (FMA-UE) and Box and Block Test (BBT). Secondary outcomes included body cognition, numbness, and neurophysiological (ERD/ERS) changes.

RESULTS: All participants demonstrated significant improvement during the intervention. FMA-UE increased by 6-16 points. The BBT showed large effects (integrated Tau-U = 0.75). Body cognition improved significantly in both sense of agency (Tau-U = 0.80) and ownership (Tau-U = 0.89). Numbness was reduced in affected cases (Tau-U = -0.85). Neurophysiological changes correlated with functional gains, with some patterns suggesting increased neural efficiency.

CONCLUSION: This first MBD-validated demonstration shows that graded, multisensory graded neurofeedback based on ERD magnitude can improve motor, self-reported numbness, and cognitive domains after stroke. These findings support adaptive closed-loop therapy as a promising, multifaceted rehabilitation strategy.

RevDate: 2026-10-23
CmpDate: 2026-10-23

Liu C, Mao Y, Ren Z, et al (2026)

Conductive hydrogel bioelectronics for chronic neuromodulation: From biomimetic design and bioactive interfaces to integrated neural platforms.

Materials today. Bio, 41:103722.

In biomedical engineering, hydrogel bioelectronics brings together the interface between flexible electronic devices and biological systems, opening up a new way for chronic neural regulation. Here we focus on the recent progress in this field, from material design to system integration. The design of high-performance conductive hydrogels is an entry point. The multi-level structure engineering strategy, such as the introduction of carbon nanotubes or conductive polymers, can raise the conductivity and mechanical toughness together. When biomimetic adhesion molecules such as polydopamine or tannic acid are added, the hydrogel has the ability of wet tissue adhesion, and anti swelling and active anti-inflammatory functions are also embedded in the material system. As a result, the resulting neural interfaces are not only more durable in practical applications but also ensure excellent biocompatibility. Turning to applications. How does this kind of material promote the development of chronic neuromodulation technology? Peripheral nerve repair, brain computer interface, spinal cord injury, autonomic nervous system regulation can be seen in several scenes. The long-term and high-precision recording and regulation of neural signals is exactly the most important link in these applications. Hydrogel electronics does have its own uniqueness in this regard. However, there is still a long way to go between laboratory research and clinical transformation. How to ensure long-term stability? Can controllable degradation be achieved in practice? Will the signal fidelity drop with time? How to optimize wireless operation and system integration? Large scale manufacturing is an unavoidable reality test. These directions are probably the worthy areas for follow-up research. Looking forward, if the lines of intelligent response materials, closed-loop sensing and control, and advanced micro processing technology can be screwed together, hydrogel bioelectronics may truly move towards the next generation of personalized, dynamic and adaptive neural diagnosis and treatment platform.

RevDate: 2026-10-19
CmpDate: 2026-10-17

Tejesh BSS, Bhaskar K, Sivaji M, et al (2026)

A sliding window and Fourier decomposition method based 1D-CNN framework for motor imagery EEG classification.

Frontiers in computational neuroscience, 20:1945160.

Electroencephalography (EEG) signal classification is fundamental requirement for effective motor imagery (MI) brain-computer interface (BCI) applications. However, current MI classification methods often depend on handcrafted spatial filtering or complex time-frequency transformations that increase computational complexity. To mitigate this limitation, we propose a unified architecture that integrates a sliding window (SW), a Fourier decomposition method (FDM), and a one-dimensional convolutional neural network (1D-CNN) for MI-EEG classification. The raw EEG data were segmented using the SW approach to augment the data and extract more temporal feature patterns from each trial. The segmented signal, containing time-domain features, was subsequently processed using a band-pass filter and FDM to extract frequency-based features. Here, FDM decomposes the signal into eight orthogonal Fourier Intrinsic Band Functions (FIBFs). A 1D-CNN architecture was employed to learn representations from the decomposed EEG signals. The proposed framework was evaluated on the BCI Competition III Dataset IVa (BCIC III IVa) and BCI Competition IV-2a (BCIC IV 2a) datasets. Our method achieved accuracies of 79.14% and 93.67% on the BCIC IV 2a and BCIC III IVa datasets, respectively, under the subject-dependent evaluation protocol. To evaluate cross-subject generalization, the proposed framework was validated using the Leave-One-Subject-Out (LOSO) protocol, achieving average classification accuracies of 76.49% on the BCIC III Dataset IVa and 55.50% on the BCIC IV 2a dataset. Furthermore, deployment on the NVIDIA Jetson Nano demonstrated complete pipeline latencies of 58.119 ms/trial and 85.055 ms/trial, corresponding to throughputs of 17.21 and 11.76 trials/s for the BCIC III IVa and BCIC IV 2a datasets, respectively. The results show the strong potential of the developed MI-EEG classification method to assist subjects with motor ailments.

RevDate: 2026-10-19

Snowin B, Hazeena P, L Narasimhan (2026)

Electroencephalography Changes in Emotional Recognition: A Signal Processing Approach Using Wavelet Features.

Annals of neurosciences [Epub ahead of print].

BACKGROUND: motion recognition using electroencephalography (EEG) has gained significant attention in the fields of affective computing and human-computer interaction due to its ability to capture real-time neural responses. EEG signal variations associated with emotional states can be analysed using wavelet-based signal processing within the arousal-valence framework.

PURPOSE: This study aims to analyse EEG signal variations associated with emotional states using a wavelet-based signal processing approach within the arousal-valence framework.

METHODS: A prospective observational study was conducted on 48 healthy participants. Emotional states were induced using image, video and music stimuli categorised under the arousal-valence model. EEG signals were recorded using the standard 10-20 electrode placement system. The acquired signals were pre-processed and analysed using discrete wavelet transform (DWT) to extract time-frequency features, including energy and entropy. Statistical analysis was performed to evaluate hemispheric differences and gender-based variations.

RESULTS: Differences in EEG activity were observed between the left and right hemispheres across multiple emotional states (p < .05). Video and music stimuli produced stronger and more distinguishable EEG responses compared to image-based stimuli. Negative emotions demonstrated higher discriminative patterns than positive emotions. Gender-based variations were also observed in EEG responses.

CONCLUSION: Wavelet-based EEG feature analysis provides meaningful and discriminative information for emotion recognition and may provide a robust feature set for future machine learning-based emotion recognition systems. Further studies incorporating classification algorithms and larger data sets are required to validate their predictive performance.

RevDate: 2026-10-19

Liu J, He Y, Liaw HP, et al (2026)

A Compressive Neural Telemetry with Address-Event-μPacket Encoding and Duty-Cycling IR-UWB Transmitter.

IEEE transactions on microwave theory and techniques, 74(8):7429-7440.

This article presents a networked wireless telemetry for 384-sensor-pixel neural data acquisition, designed to support high throughput, low power consumption, and meter-scale communication distance. The proposed event-based Address-Event-μPacket (AEμP) encoder with differential binary phase shift keying (DBPSK) modulation addresses the challenging throughput-power trade-off for neural telemetry without compromising transmission range and neural signal fidelity. The encoder compresses data and minimizes protocol overhead as well as memory access. In addition, a duty-cycling IR-UWB transmitter is proposed as communication link for the event-based encoder. To support the multi-access operation, a duty-cycling frequency-locked loop (FLL) is adopted to provide fast-settling packet-level frequency control for frequency division multiplexing (FDM). The FLL achieves warm-start lock within 1 μs with 2.73-MHz RMS variation, meeting the frequency accuracy required for DBPSK at a 125-MHz symbol rate. The measured 3-access-node spectra comply with FCC/ETSI masks in 6-8.5 GHz. The neural signal integrity is validated by evaluating the RMS error between the reconstruction signals and the original in-vivo data captured by a high-pixel count Neuropixels probe. The presented AEμP achieves a 11.52× compression ratio. Fabricated in 65 nm CMOS with active area of 0.12 mm[2], the presented telemetry is capable of transmitting 384 pixels of neural data with low compression error (3.6-μV RMS), at record-low power of 1 mW, and with a 6.6-meter air communication range.

RevDate: 2026-10-22
CmpDate: 2026-10-19

Wu Y, Dong Q, Chen J, et al (2026)

Temporal synchrony promotes motor recovery and ipsilesional cortical reorganization in BCI-based stroke rehabilitation: a randomized controlled trial.

Journal of neuroengineering and rehabilitation, 23(1):.

BACKGROUND: The therapeutic mechanisms of brain-computer interface (BCI) rehabilitation remain partially understood. Specifically, it is unclear whether functional gains are driven primarily by active neural engagement or strictly by the temporal contingency between motor intention and sensory feedback. This study aimed to deconstruct the BCI paradigm to isolate the specific contributions of these core components to functional recovery and cortical reorganization in subacute stroke.

METHODS: Seventy-seven subacute stroke patients were randomized into three intervention arms. Group C (synchronous) received robotic assistance strictly contingent on real-time detection of task engagement during motor imagery; Group B (asynchronous) performed identical motor imagery tasks but received temporally uncoupled robotic assistance; and Group A (sham) received sham motor imagery detection and preset passive robotic assistance. The intervention lasted for 3 weeks. The primary clinical outcome was Fugl-Meyer Assessment-Upper Extremity (FMA-UE) scores. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was included as an exploratory neuroimaging measure to provide preliminary information on cortical responses associated with the intervention.

RESULTS: Sixty-eight participants were included in the final analysis. After adjustment for baseline values, Group C showed significantly higher post-intervention FMA-UE scores than both Group A (adjusted mean difference = 7.47, 95% CI [1.94, 13.00], P = 0.004) and Group B (adjusted mean difference = 9.72, 95% CI [4.14, 15.30], P < 0.001). Group C also showed significantly higher post-intervention MBI scores than both Group A (adjusted mean difference = 21.15, 95% CI [12.49, 29.81], P < 0.001) and Group B (adjusted mean difference = 21.27, 95% CI [12.42, 30.12], P < 0.001). Exploratory neuroimaging analyses showed that only the change in ipsilesional sensorimotor cortex laterality index during motor imagery was significantly correlated with motor improvement (ρ = 0.404, P = 0.002, q = 0.012), whereas no resting-state or task-related fNIRS group comparisons remained significant after false discovery rate correction.

CONCLUSIONS: Synchronous BCI training was associated with superior clinical improvement compared with asynchronous and sham conditions in subacute stroke. The benefit was observed only when robotic assistance was contingent on real-time task performance, despite all three groups receiving comparable device exposure and motor imagery instruction. The neuroimaging results remain exploratory and should be confirmed in larger studies with prospectively defined imaging endpoints. Trial registration This trial was registered under the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR2400091197) and was prospectively registered on October 21, 2024. Ethics Approval: Approved by the Ethics Committee of Xuzhou Rehabilitation Hospital (XK-LSW-20241017-009).

RevDate: 2026-10-19

Pitt KM, Sawall J, Butler E, et al (2026)

Bridging the Gap Between Design and Access: Toward Visual Scene Displays for Brain-Computer Interface Use in Augmentative and Alternative Communication by Children.

Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR [Epub ahead of print].

PURPOSE: Brain-computer interface (BCI) may support communication and computer interaction through neural signals such as the P300 event-related potential (ERP). As a step toward integrating photographic visual scene displays (VSDs) in BCI, this study examined the feasibility of incorporating contextual, naturalistic scenes in which communication items were embedded asymmetrically.

METHOD: To evaluate the effects of contextual scene use, 24 neurotypical children aged 8-13 years completed three experimental conditions: (1) a contextual scene with asymmetrical item placement, (2) an asymmetrical arrangement of the same items without contextual information, and (3) a standard grid. Electroencephalogram data were analyzed for the N170, P300, and N400 ERP components, and offline (predicted) BCI augmentative and alternative communication accuracy was calculated.

RESULTS: The results showed that asymmetry increased frontal and centro-parietal P300 amplitudes, and the scene enhanced occipital N170. Offline BCI performance was similar across the scene and grid conditions, and participants rated the scene as more visually appealing.

CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that asymmetry and contextual embedding within scenes may enhance neural engagement and user experience, providing a preliminary foundation for considering photographic VSDs into pediatric BCI research.

RevDate: 2026-10-19

Sun W, Fu S, Zhang J, et al (2026)

A spatio-temporal attention convolutional network with topology-preserving channel embedding and transformer for EEG decoding.

Neural networks : the official journal of the International Neural Network Society, 206(Pt A):109755 pii:S0893-6080(26)01210-4 [Epub ahead of print].

EEG-based BCI has shown promising applications in motor rehabilitation and emotion recognition. Given the non-stationarity and variability of EEG signals, it is essential to develop classification models that can effectively extract spatio-temporal features while maintaining strong generalization capabilities. This paper proposes a spatio-temporal attention convolutional network for EEG decoding (E-STACNet) to encode the topological features and temporal characteristics of EEG signals within a unified network framework. It consists of channel-attention (CA) block, convolutional (CV) layers, multi-head self-attention (MSA) and classifier layer. Specifically, CA block encodes spatial topological feature via a topology-preserving channel embedding method. Then convolutional layers are employed to encode low-level temporal information and further extract spatial features, followed by MSA block to highlight the most important temporal information of EEG signals. Finally, the outputs are obtained through two fully-connected layers. We conducted experiments on three public EEG-based datasets including BCI Competition IV dataset 2a, Giga DB and DEAP. The results demonstrate E-STACNet achieves average accuracies of 88.00% and 80.62% on datasets 2a and Giga DB, respectively. On the DEAP, it reaches average accuracies of 96.49% and 96.46% for valence and arousal. The proposed model outperforms other state-of-the-art models on all three datasets. Additionally, the ablation study reveals the importance of topology-preserving channel embedding for the proposed network. Visualization analysis shows E-STACNet could obtain the importance of channels at different locations through the channel-attention mechanism, which demonstrates the interpretability of the proposed model. Overall, the accurate and generalization capabilities of E-STACNet will promote the development of EEG-based BCIs.

RevDate: 2026-10-19

Kadlec K, Gamez J, Aflalo T, et al (2026)

Distinct patterns of whole-body coding in human motor cortex and posterior parietal cortex.

Neuron pii:S0896-6273(26)00740-3 [Epub ahead of print].

Traditional views of cortical motor areas hold that movements of different parts of the body, or effectors, are represented in distinct anatomical locations. The extent of overlap in effector representations has been a topic of debate for decades. We recorded from single neurons in hand areas of the motor cortex (MC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC) of tetraplegic humans while they attempted movements across the body. We found a population response to every movement tested in both areas; however, the hand knob of MC more selectively responded to hand movements, whereas PPC represented all effectors strongly. Single neurons in MC responded selectively to a single effector or to two effectors that were part of the same limb. In PPC, neurons exhibited mixed selectivity, responding to combinations of effectors. These findings suggest a transition from a highly effector-general representation in PPC to regional effector specificity in MC.

RevDate: 2026-10-19

Gorenshtein A, Adiniaev Y, Liba T, et al (2026)

The calibration-to-accuracy mapping in P300 spellers does not transport across cohorts and was not restored by tested alignment or local recalibration.

Journal of neural engineering [Epub ahead of print].

Objective A calibration-derived score has been related to online P300-speller accuracy in the same session, always within the cohort measured. We evaluated whether a mapping from that score to expected accuracy transports to withheld cohorts. Approach Retrospective secondary analysis of BigP3BCI 1.0.0, the largest evaluation of this relationship to date: 18 of 20 studies contributed 271 participants, 739 session-condition records, and 19,611 character selections. The predictor was a decoder's cross-validated discriminability on calibration epochs, one study withheld from development. Between-cohort variation was summarised by the random-effects standard deviation tau. Main Results The association was positive in all 18 cohorts but varied widely (r 0.190 to 0.928; participant-level r = 0.714, p < 0.001), with 12 CIs excluding zero. Pooled estimation error was 0.098 (95% CI 0.091 to 0.107) against a benchmark of 0.146. Calibration did not transport: intercept tau 0.87 (unrepresented-cohort interval -1.97 to 1.85, log-odds); cohort-specific slopes varied more than tenfold (tau 0.43, interval 0.111 to 2.005). Neither alignment (signal- or score-space) nor either nonlinear boundary meaningfully reduced this heterogeneity. Local recalibration with up to 16 participants did not reliably improve on transporting; refitting both intercept and slope was significantly worse than transporting at the smallest sizes. Median time per selection, a stopping-rule proxy, accounted for 66% of between-cohort slope variance in meta-regression. The four ALS cohorts gave an uncorrected slope spread of 0.223, against 0.560 overall. Significance The evaluated score is a classifier's cross-validated discriminability on each session's calibration data rather than the source studies' undocumented online decoder. That score reproducibly signals within-session accuracy, but its mapping to accuracy is cohort-specific and supports ranking sessions after local validation rather than reporting accuracy elsewhere. The four-cohort ALS subgroup appeared more homogeneous than the full archive, illustrating how conclusions about transportability from a small cohort set can be fragile. .

RevDate: 2026-10-19

Zhang T, Bai D, Wei X, et al (2026)

Subjective emotional ratings dissociate brain activation and network patterns during counterfactual outcome processing.

NeuroImage pii:S1053-8119(26)00618-X [Epub ahead of print].

Human decision-making integrates outcome evaluation, counterfactual comparison, and individual traits. We investigated the neural processing of outcome-related emotions during economic decision-making by classifying feedback according to participants' subjective emotional ratings rather than objective gain-loss categories. Participants completed a Wheel of Fortune gambling task during fMRI scanning and provided emotional ratings for feedback outcomes, enabling identification of regret, relief, disappointment, and elation. We also assessed individual differences in regret proneness, maximization tendencies, alternative search, high standards, and decision difficulty. Behaviorally, emotional ratings increased with larger obtained outcomes and decreased as reference outcomes increased, indicating robust modulation of outcome evaluation by counterfactual information Whole-brain analyses revealed greater activation for low-rating than high-rating outcomes, indicating stronger neural responses to negative than positive emotions across feedback types. Complete feedback also elicited greater activation than partial feedback within the same emotional valence. Network-level analyses revealed partially dissociable neural profiles for positive and negative emotions. Positive emotions, including elation and relief, predominantly recruited the somatomotor network, whereas negative emotions, including disappointment and regret, engaged broader distributions across the default mode, dorsal attention, and other large-scale networks. Regret elicited the largest activation extent, whereas elation elicited the smallest. Region-of-interest analyses showed that bilateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) responses were significantly greater for negative than positive emotions and for complete than partial feedback conditions. Across all four emotions, right OFC activation was negatively associated with maximization. For elation, relief, and disappointment, right OFC activation was also negatively associated with alternative search and decision difficulty, whereas these associations were absent for regret. Together, these findings demonstrate that subjective emotional evaluation, counterfactual context, and decision-related traits jointly shape the neural processing of decision outcomes, while suggesting relatively trait-independent neural processing of regret.

RevDate: 2026-10-22
CmpDate: 2026-10-20

Fleeting CR, Gunduz A, Okun MS, et al (2026)

Editorial: Deep brain stimulation think tank: updates in neurotechnology and neuromodulation, volume VI.

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 20:2007514.

RevDate: 2026-10-20

Sato M, Hatakeyama E, Inoue M, et al (2026)

Delineating neural contributions to electroencephalogram-based speech decoding.

Journal of neural engineering [Epub ahead of print].

Objective. Speech Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have emerged as a pivotal technology in facilitating communication for individuals with speech impairments. Utilizing electroencephalography (EEG) for noninvasive speech BCIs offers an accessible and affordable solution, potentially benefiting a broader audience. However, EEG-based speech decoding remains controversial especially for overt speech, due to difficulties in separating speech-related neural activities from myoelectric potential artifacts generated during articulation. Moreover, because paradigms for collecting covert speech data are inherently less scalable than those for overt speech, whether the neural dynamics underlying EEG-based decoding of overt speech are also present during covert speech remains an open and practically important question. Approach. Here we aim to delineate the extent of the neural contributions to EEG-based speech decoding, and the degree to which the underlying neural dynamics are shared across overt and covert speech, by employing Explainable AI techniques to a convolutional neural network predicting spoken words based on signals obtained by ultra-high-density (uhd)-EEG. Main results. We found that electrode-wise contributions to the decoding cannot be explained by their mutual information with electromyography (EMG). Furthermore, contributing periods of speech to EEG-based decoding are distinct from those to decoding solely relying on EMG. In contrast, there are significant overlaps in signal timings contributing to EEG-based decoding, regardless of vocal conditions such as overt or covert speech. Notably, the denoising process successfully enhanced the decoding contribution from electrodes within speech-related brain areas for all speech conditions. Significance. Altogether, our findings support the idea that, with appropriate preprocessing, EEG becomes a valuable tool for decoding spoken words based on underlying neural activities. .

RevDate: 2026-10-19
CmpDate: 2026-10-17

Wei Y, Cui H, Zhu J, et al (2026)

An exploration in mental health care: The launch of China's first psychiatric noninvasive brain-computer interface (BCI) and neuromodulation clinic.

General psychiatry, 39(5):e70069.

RevDate: 2026-10-19
CmpDate: 2026-10-17

Zhao Y, Wei LJ, Sun XT, et al (2026)

Prior photon measurement density functions constructed in standard channel space for functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

Biomedical optics express, 17(10):5034-5047.

Photon measurement density function (PMDF) determines the measurement locations and their associated sensitivity to the hemodynamic changes for an fNIRS channel. It is therefore essential for pre-experimental optode arrangement and post-experimental signal analysis and interpretation in fNIRS studies. However, accurate PMDF estimation requires subject-specific MRI data, which are unavailable in common fNIRS studies. Previous studies often rely on PMDFs derived from a single head template (template-PMDF), ignoring inter-subject variability in anatomy and optode placement, and are limited to sparse predefined scalp locations. Here, we propose a methodological framework to construct prior PMDFs (prior-PMDF) by synthesizing PMDFs derived from multiple subjects in a structural MRI database. This approach incorporates inter-subject variability and enables estimation of PMDFs in the standard brain space for arbitrary scalp locations. We demonstrate the utility of the prior-PMDF in estimating regional sensitivities, including voxel-wise sensitivity, sensitivity to intra- and extracerebral tissues, and sensitivity to atlas-defined brain regions. The estimation accuracy of the prior-PMDF is evaluated by comparing it with subject-specific PMDFs derived from MRI data that are not included in the construction database. Furthermore, comparison with template-PMDF showed that the proposed method significantly improves accuracy, thereby supporting more reliable PMDF estimation in MRI-free fNIRS studies.

RevDate: 2026-10-19
CmpDate: 2026-10-17

Tang B, Wei J, Liu Y, et al (2026)

Unequal economic impacts of climate change via idealized carbon dioxide removal: Insights from deep learning.

Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)), 7(10):101505.

Rapidly reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels is essential to meeting the Paris Agreement's temperature targets. Previous assessments of CO2 removal (CDR) have primarily focused on the hysteresis and invertibility of climate change itself, overlooking quantitative analysis of potential economic impacts of climate change via CDR. In this study, we first develop a powerful neural network model, EconClimNet, trained on decades of economic data from 1,554 sub-national regions worldwide and 111 climate indices derived from the fifth-generation ECMWF atmospheric reanalysis (ERA5). Compared to popular machine learning algorithms used in the Earth science community, EconClimNet achieves superior performance in capturing the intricate relationship between climate indices and economic outcomes. On this basis, we apply EconClimNet to the outputs from idealized CO2 ramp-up and ramp-down experiments from phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). It is found that altering climate trajectories through idealized CDR can yield significant long-term economic benefits globally, with Oceania overall positioned to experience the greatest gains with an increasing trend of about 1.41 [0.73-8.76] million USD year[-1]. Unequal economic effects also emerge across income levels. Rich countries see more benefits (an increasing trend of about 1.56 [0.31-6.21] million USD year[-1]) via CDR, mainly contributed by services (an increasing trend of about 0.03 [0.00-0.23] million USD year[-1]). Our findings underscore the need for governments to foster the innovation, development, and prudent deployment of CDR technologies, as well as to advance global CDR strategies that prioritize vulnerable nations from a climate justice perspective.

RevDate: 2026-10-16
CmpDate: 2026-10-16

Li Y, Yang R, Xu X, et al (2026)

Lower Task-Estimated Visual Working Memory Capacity in Adults with Epilepsy: A Cross-Sectional Quantitative Assessment Using Eye Tracking.

Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland), 16(19):.

Background/Objectives: Cognitive dysfunction is clinically relevant in epilepsy, and objective task-based measures could complement neuropsychological assessment, but visual working memory across graded loads and task-embedded gaze remain incompletely characterized. We quantified task-estimated capacity and performance using gaze-triggered change localization. Methods: We analyzed data from 222 adults with epilepsy, including focal and generalized epilepsy, and 133 healthy controls. Participants identified the changed item in a test array by sustained gaze; set size (2-7) followed a staircase procedure. Outcomes were three task-performance measures, two capacity-related measures, and eight eye-movement measures. Repeated-measure outcomes were analyzed with mixed-effect models and the capacity-related measures by ordinary least squares, with Benjamini-Hochberg correction. Results: Adults with epilepsy had lower mean set size and K at set size 4 (K4), lower accuracy, longer response time, and greater final gaze-to-target distance than controls (all q < 0.05; absolute Cohen's d, 0.20-0.45). K4 was 2.66 versus 3.03 items. Differences persisted after adjustment for educational attainment and were directionally similar in focal and generalized epilepsy. No interaction between group and set size survived correction for task performance; group differences did not vary detectably across the observed load range. No eye-movement group difference survived correction. Conclusions: In a relatively large adult cohort, task-estimated visual working memory capacity and task performance were lower in epilepsy, without broad corrected group differences in the selected array-level eye-movement measures. By combining graded load with gaze-based response registration, the study characterizes the magnitude, load dependence, timing, and spatial precision of visual working memory performance differences within a single task.

RevDate: 2026-10-16
CmpDate: 2026-10-16

Lee CH, CM Huang (2026)

Gradient-Free Filter Importance for Structured Pruning of Compact EEG Networks.

Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 26(19):.

Deploying EEG classification networks on resource-constrained brain-computer interface (BCI) hardware motivates structured filter pruning, yet which importance criterion to trust in already-compact architectures is unclear. We present a leakage-free, physically materialized comparison of five filter-importance criteria-ablation-based structural sensitivity analysis (SSA), first-order Taylor, L1-norm, geometric median, and random-across four datasets, two paradigms (motor imagery and ERP), two architectures, multiple capacities, and with and without fine-tuning. On EEGNet, after fine-tuning, SSA and Taylor are statistically equivalent: pooled over the four datasets their accuracy difference falls within a ±1 percentage-point margin (TOST, p=0.01), and on ShallowConvNet SSA is never worse than Taylor; both criteria significantly outperform the weight-based and random ones. SSA's value is therefore not a more accurate ranking but its formulation: on a weight-quantized (8-bit) EEGNet, where the loss gradient-and hence Taylor-is undefined on the quantized graph used here, SSA is the best gradient-free criterion, significantly beating L1, geometric-median, and random pruning in aggregate-extending structured pruning to the quantized, gradient-free but editable deployment regime. We further show that the pruning schedule and fine-tuning matter more than the choice between strong criteria, and that training large then pruning with fine-tuning recovers accuracy equivalent to a directly trained smaller model. The results clarify where the importance criterion does and does not matter for compact EEG decoders.

RevDate: 2026-10-16
CmpDate: 2026-10-16

Habibzadeh H, Zois DS, JJS Norton (2026)

MetaIDNet: A Fast Brain-Computer Interface for Color Vision Assessment.

Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 26(19):.

Our laboratory has recently demonstrated objective, quantitative, and precise brain-computer interface (BCI)-based color vision (CV) assessment. During assessment, participants look at a flashing stimulus that alternates between two light sources. Light sources that appear to be different colors elicit larger steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs); those that appear to be similar colors elicit smaller SSVEPs. Thus, the stimulus-evoked responses depend on an individual's CV. BCI-based CV assessments evaluate CV by observing SSVEP sizes elicited over a color space; their accuracy depends on the sampling strategy and noise in the individual observations. Existing systems uniformly sample the color space and average multiple SSVEPs observed from the same location to reduce noise. Effectively, these systems collect additional observations to improve assessment accuracy, but at the expense of assessment speed. We present MetaIDNet, a closed-loop BCI that uses Gaussian process regression (GPR) and a neural network to improve the speed-accuracy tradeoff of BCI-based CV assessment. We perform offline and online experiments with ten and eight participants, respectively, to evaluate the speed and accuracy of MetaIDNet and compare it with two existing methods. Our offline experiments show that MetaIDNet improves CV assessment speed by 70% (while maintaining accuracy), and our online experiments show that MetaIDNet improves CV assessment accuracy by 40% (while maintaining the same speed). The results confirm that MetaIDNet significantly improves the speed and accuracy of BCIs for CV assessment.

RevDate: 2026-10-16
CmpDate: 2026-10-16

Serna B, Salazar R, Alonso-Silverio GA, et al (2026)

Fear-EEG-AI: A Conceptual and Operational Framework for Designing EEG-AI Systems for the Inference of Fear-Compatible Neurophysiological States.

Sensors (Basel, Switzerland), 26(19):.

Electroencephalography (EEG) and artificial intelligence (AI) are central tools in affective computing, yet fear-related inference remains constrained by a gap between experimental performance and deployable evidence: high accuracy on controlled datasets guarantees neither neurobiological specificity, nor robustness across users, nor traceable inference. EEG does not measure fear directly; it captures cortical dynamics compatible with threat processing, arousal or vigilance. This paper introduces the Fear-EEG-AIFramework, a technology-independent architecture for designing, validating and deploying EEG-AI systems targeting fear-compatible neurophysiological states. Building on a prior systematic review, it organizes development into three hierarchical levels-neurobiological foundation, neuroelectric correlates and computational modeling-governed by six cross-cutting principles, and makes them evaluable through eight observable dimensions, the Fear-EEG-AI Alignment Index (FAI) and five validation evidence levels. Applied to the eight eligible studies of that corpus by two raters who had not drafted the instrument, with adjudication by a third, the rubric reached 67.2% exact agreement (quadratic-weighted κ=0.741; ICC(2,1) =0.744). Under 10,000 admissible weightings the equal-weight ordering survived in 10.1% of draws, and one of 56 ordered pairs met a stability criterion fixed before the pairwise results were tabulated. The index is therefore reported as a descriptor of methodological documentation and not as a ranking of implementations.

RevDate: 2026-10-16

Anniwa D, Chen Z, Chen X, et al (2026)

Advanced biomaterial technologies for neural regeneration in central nervous system diseases: mechanisms and applications.

Nanoscale [Epub ahead of print].

Effective repair of central nervous system (CNS) injuries remains highly challenging due to several formidable barriers, including severe structural disruption, hostile microenvironments, and limited intrinsic regenerative capacity. In response, biomaterials incorporated with therapeutic agents provide advanced interventional strategies for neural regeneration. This review systematically summarizes recent progress in biomaterial-based CNS repair, focusing on three core strategies: physical remodeling of the neural structure, targeted drug delivery systems for biochemical regulation, and cellular intervention. Furthermore, we critically analyze the manufacturing and regulatory bottlenecks currently impeding clinical translation. Finally, we propose the integration of neural organoids and brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies as a promising trajectory for next-generation intelligent neural repair materials.

RevDate: 2026-10-16

Duwadi S, Rogers D, Boyd AD, et al (2026)

Decoding Spatial Attention in the Cocktail Party Problem Using Whole-head High-Density fNIRS.

NeuroImage pii:S1053-8119(26)00607-5 [Epub ahead of print].

Spatial attention is critical for solving the cocktail party problem, a longstanding problem in neuroscience and artificial speech recognition. The ability to decode where humans are attending in a cocktail party like scene would empower applications in brain computer interfaces and assistive devices such as hearing aids. Here we demonstrate that, in an overt attention task, the attended spatial location can be decoded robustly from single trial hemodynamic responses, using a whole head high density fNIRS system. We also identify critical brain regions that make the highest contribution to decoding accuracy. Specifically, we find that decoding based on a small fraction of channels located within the left and right inferior parietal lobule (IPL) achieves maximal decoding accuracy comparable to all channels. Decoding fell close to chance in a covert auditory condition in which participants held central fixation while attending to the same talkers, indicating that auditory attention alone without orientation is not sufficient for decoding. Finally, control experiments suggest that overt-condition decoding is influenced by sustained eye position/gaze direction, not eye movement. These results support the development of fNIRS-integrated BCIs and assistive devices controlled by overt spatial attention.

RevDate: 2026-10-17
CmpDate: 2026-10-16

Chen Y, Gao Y, Zhou J, et al (2026)

Brain-computer interfaces: innovations and challenges in the field of cerebral palsy rehabilitation.

Italian journal of pediatrics, 52(1):.

Brain-computer interfaces have shown great potential in the rehabilitation of Cerebral palsy, improving the ability of children with cerebral palsy to perform activities of daily living by replacing and restoring lost neurological functions, as well as accurately evaluating cognitive functions and facilitating rehabilitation in conjunction with various rehabilitation techniques. Nonetheless, numerous challenges persist in the application of brain-computer interfaces for cerebral palsy. Future research should focus on developing enhanced and more dependable brain-computer interfaces, advancing the hardware, and establishing ethical and regulatory frameworks to facilitate their utilisation in cerebral palsy rehabilitation.

RevDate: 2026-10-17

Chen ZS, Lu BL, W Wu (2025)

Representation Learning and Foundation Models for Electroencephalography Analyses: Current trends, fundamental insights, and future directions?.

IEEE signal processing magazine, 42(5):36-57.

Since the first ground-breaking human electroencephalography (EEG) recordings in 1924 [1], the past century has witnessed a tremendous growth of EEG applications in cognitive neuroscience, clinical and engineering applications due to EEG's low operational cost and mobility [2]. On the one hand, advances in high-density non-invasive scalp EEG or invasive intracranial EEG (iEEG) have offered both excellent temporal resolution and increasingly improved spatial resolution to study brain functions and their link to emotions, memory, learning, and diseases. EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) can offer new dimensions for entertainment, virtual reality, neurofeedback and closed-loop therapy. On the other hand, recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have opened new opportunities for analyses of EEG and other neural data [3]. This article aims at presenting an overview of the cutting-edge machine learning techniques for EEG analyses. By leveraging large-scale EEG data with state-of-the-art representation learning and transfer learning paradigms, we are empowered to discover latent EEG features that are proved useful for clinical care and BCI. We discuss some general principles of representation learning and show walk-through practical examples of EEG analysis. The article also aims at highlighting the effort of applying AI models to discover neuroscience insights and linking them to the fundamentals of EEG signal analyses from a signal-processing perspective. While our focus is on EEG and iEEG signals, most of the approaches discussed here are generally applicable to other brain signal modalities.

RevDate: 2026-10-15

Xie Y, Deng J, Wei C, et al (2026)

Scalable Patterning of Organic Electrochemical Transistors for Logic Gates and Neuromorphic Computing.

Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) [Epub ahead of print].

Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are promising building blocks for bioelectronics owing to their efficient ion-electron coupling, soft-material compatibility and high transconductance. However, their large off-state currents and poor scalability have so far limited high-density integration and circuit-level functionality. Here we introduce a patterning strategy suitable for solution‑processable organic semiconductors, enabling high‑fidelity OECT arrays with suppressed leakage and off‑state currents, on/off ratios up to 10[7], and good device‑to‑device uniformity. Leveraging these patterned OECTs, we demonstrate the integration of logic circuits, including complementary inverters as well as NAND and NOR gates, exhibiting high voltage gain (up to 203 V/V), large noise margins (92.17%) and stable operation at low supply voltages. Benefiting from the patterning approach and the AlOx-induced suppression of off-state current, the static power consumption of the inverter is reduced by approximately 90%. Beyond digital logic, we further show that these devices emulate key synaptic functions such as short-term plasticity and enable reservoir computing tasks, defining a manufacturable platform for integrated bioelectronic circuitry and neuromorphic architectures. This patterning strategy therefore provides a general route toward high-density biointerfaces and next-generation brain-computer interfaces.

RevDate: 2026-10-15

Hu AQ, Mao ZX, Li YY, et al (2026)

Unveiling core clinical features of self-harm: A network and mediation analysis study among Chinese psychiatric adolescents.

Journal of behavioral addictions pii:2006.2025.00574 [Epub ahead of print].

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Self-harm imposes a substantial burden among adolescents, yet targeted interventions remain limited. This study examined the interrelationships among clinically relevant characteristics of self-harm outcomes, non-suicidal motives (NSMs), addictive features (AF), self-injury methods (SIMs), and suicidality (SUI), to identify core clinical features for more precise intervention.

METHODS: A total of 547 adolescent patients (13-19 years) who had engaged in self-harm during the past year were recruited from two Chinese hospitals. Self-report questionnaires assessed NSMs, AF, SUI, frequencies of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) and suicidal self-injury (SSI), and SIMs. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used as a data-driven approach to identify patterns of co-occurrence among SIMs. Network and exploratory mediation analyses were subsequently conducted to evaluate statistical interrelationships among clinical features.

RESULTS: Among participants, 69.8% engaged in both NSSI and SSI. EFA identified two empirically derived groupings of SIMs: self-injury using external tools (SIET) and self-injury involving direct bodily actions (SIDBA). Network analysis identified AF as the strongest bridge symptom and SIET with the highest node strength. Exploratory mediation analyses suggested that AF statistically accounted for substantial proportions of the associations between NSMs and multiple self-harm related outcomes, including NSSI (41.3%), SSI (75.0%), SIET (62.3%), SIDBA (45.4%), and SUI (75.7%).

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: AF and SIET emerged as important clinically relevant features of self-harm. Greater attention to these features may help improve clinical assessment and targeted intervention for adolescents with self-harm.

RevDate: 2026-10-15

Natarajan AM, P Sajda (2026)

Peripheral physiological decoding of arousal in a boundary-avoidance task: signal validity and individualized control.

Journal of neural engineering [Epub ahead of print].

Scoring well on a task-demand label does not show that a decoder measures arousal. We ask whether peripheral physiology decodes demand better than EEG, whether the index behaves like graded arousal rather than a clock, and what a controller could do with it. Approach. We re-analysed a public boundary-avoidance flight task in which sixteen participants received EEG neurofeedback, half-sham feedback or silence. A decoder trained on peripheral signals (cardiac, respiratory, electrodermal, pupillometric) from an open-loop calibration block was compared with a retrained EEG decoder, filter-bank common spatial patterns, and motor-only and shuffled-label controls. All analyses are offline; the decoder was never in the loop. Main results. The peripheral decoder reached 93.0% within-subject AUC against 85.2% for EEG. Ring size shrinks on a fixed schedule, so accuracy alone cannot separate arousal from trial position. Three tests did: 48.6% of hard-course trials ended below the scale midpoint; the index separated the courses at matched elapsed time (p= 1.4 ×10-31), where EEG did not; and it tracked the autonomic channels. Only the peripheral index recovered an inverted-U with performance, robust in a duration-safe hazard analysis (p= 3.5 ×10-10). Arousal rose 14.1 points in the 10 s before failure; sustained between-condition differences above 7.5 points are excluded. Subjects varied reliably in how strongly excess arousal predicted failure, predictably from pre-loop calibration. Personalised control bands gave the best held-out discrimination, though at N = 16 indistinguishable from a retuned universal band. Significance. Arousal is a state of the whole body, and here the body reads it better than the scalp. The results separate three often-conflated requirements: accuracy on a demand label, validity as an arousal signal, and usefulness for control. The signal that added information over a fixed rule was distance above a band set by each subject's recent variability.

RevDate: 2026-10-15

Chrisilla S, RS Selvakumari (2026)

A GRAPH CONVOLUTION BASED DUAL-BRANCH NETWORK FOR DECODING OF UPPER-LIMB MOTOR IMAGERY EEG SIGNALS.

Journal of neuroscience methods pii:S0165-0270(26)00251-7 [Epub ahead of print].

BACKGROUND: Analysing motor imagery EEG signals using conventional Euclidean feature computation is challenging due to low spatial resolution, non-stationarity, and complex inter-channel dependencies, which limit robust subject-independent generalization in brain-computer interface systems.

NEW METHOD: This study proposes a graph-based convolutional framework for subject-independent decoding of upper-limb motor imagery. The model integrates graph convolution with skip connections and handcrafted time-frequency features, together with parallel spatial and temporal convolutional pathways. Graph convolution captures functional connectivity between electrodes, while convolutional modules enhance spatial-temporal representation learning. Subject-independent evaluation is ensured using Stratified Group K-Fold (SGKF) and Leave-One-Subject-Out (LOSO) validation protocols.

RESULTS: The framework was evaluated on the PhysioNet, BCI IV-2a, and BCI IV-2b datasets using multiple electrode configurations. For the PhysioNet dataset, three upper-limb classes were considered, achieving SGKF accuracies of 86.42%, 91.01%, and 93.91% using 64, 21, and 5 electrodes, respectively, and LOSO accuracies of 92.25%, 95.72%, and 96.01%. On the BCI IV-2a dataset, SGKF accuracies of 86.13%, 89.01%, and 92.33% were obtained, with LOSO accuracies reaching 97.12% using five electrodes. For the BCI IV-2b dataset, accuracies of 88.60% (SGKF) and 93.35% (LOSO) were achieved using only three electrodes.

The proposed graph-based framework demonstrates competitive performance to representative graph-based methods while requiring fewer trainable parameters and EEG electrodes.

CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate that graph-based deep learning enables accurate, subject-independent motor imagery decoding with reduced model complexity and minimal electrode usage, supporting practical and resource-efficient brain-computer interface systems.

RevDate: 2026-10-16
CmpDate: 2026-10-16

Yang R, Xu S, Pang W, et al (2026)

Perception-Feedback Mapping Strategies for Flexible Human-Machine Interfaces.

Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.), 38(58):e74589.

The field of flexible human-machine interfaces (HMIs) has been evolving rapidly with progress in materials science, structural design, device fabrication, and system integration. Developments of advanced flexible sensing and feedback devices have remarkably expanded the perceptual modalities, feedback capabilities, and functional scope of these systems. However, the broader deployment of flexible HMIs depends not only on the device performance of sensing/feedback components, but also on the control strategy that translates sensed signals into command outputs for feedback modules. This review highlights recent progress in such perception-feedback mapping strategies for flexible HMIs. Representative sensing and feedback modules, together with common system-level physical architectures, are briefly introduced as a basis for analyzing the relationship between sensed inputs and feedback outputs. A systematic framework is then proposed based on the principle of signal flow from the perception to the feedback side, allowing perception-feedback mapping strategies to be classified into command-based mapping, continuous mapping, and closed-loop control. Comprehensive discussions on these three categories of mapping strategies are presented, covering their operating principles, system implementation, and practical applications. Finally, we discuss current challenges and future directions toward more robust, generalizable, and integrated flexible HMI systems.

RevDate: 2026-10-16

Sun C, Bao K, Sun B, et al (2026)

Geometrical-optics resonator photonics.

Nature communications, 17(1):.

Conventional waveguide optical resonators face inherent limitations of low damage thresholds, limited coupling tunability, and stochastic resonance. To overcome these, we introduce a geometrical-optics resonator (GOR) framework, emulating free-space reflection and thin-film coupling on-chip. Using ultra-wide waveguides with total internal reflection (TIR) mirrors and frustrated-TIR couplers, GORs eliminate conventional constraints. Fabricated devices achieve intrinsic Q-factors >1 million and enable tunable microwave photonic filters operating distortion-free at about 10× higher optical power. Design flexibility allows precisely tuned coupled resonators, facilitating cascaded networks for spectral engineering. Demonstrated GOR photonic molecules exhibit dynamically adjustable mode splitting (0.49 free spectral range), nearing theoretical limits. The platform also realizes record-large-scale Floquet topological photonic insulators with 1281 GOR lattices, supporting robust edge modes against defects and a broadband continuum. The GOR sets new performance benchmarks, enabling scalable platforms for quantum simulation and topological networks while driving integrated photonics toward higher density and system-level integration.

RevDate: 2026-10-14
CmpDate: 2026-10-14

Cao R, Miao M, Y Gan (2026)

The interplay of family support and family incivility on adolescent mental health.

Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence, 36(4):e70290.

Both positive and negative family interactions are closely associated with adolescent mental health. Using an integrated point of view, this study used a longitudinal design to examine the interplay patterns of family support and family incivility on adolescent mental health. Two waves of data were collected from 999 Chinese high school students. Polynomial regressions and response surface analyses were used to examine interplay patterns of family support and incivility, specifically, their congruence effect and incongruence effect on mental health outcomes, including well-being (life satisfaction and meaning in life) and psychopathological symptoms (anxiety and depressive symptoms). Model comparison was conducted within a series of models to select the best fitting model for each mental health outcome. As for positive mental health outcomes, both life satisfaction and meaning in life had a curvilinear correlation with the incongruence of family support and family incivility. The correlations were larger when family support was higher than family incivility than vice versa. Additionally, a significant interaction effect of family support and family incivility was found on meaning in life. Specifically, the positive association between family support and meaning in life was weaker when family incivility was high. As for negative mental health outcomes, both anxiety and depressive symptoms were linearly correlated with the incongruence of family support and family incivility. Specifically, greater family support relative to family incivility was associated with lower levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms. These findings promoted understanding of the impact of family environment on adolescent mental health and highlighted the importance of considering both positive and negative forms of family interaction.

RevDate: 2026-10-15
CmpDate: 2026-10-14

Zaway L, Zaway I, Ktari J, et al (2026)

Optimized hybrid Transformer-based model for EEG classification: application to wheelchair control.

AIMS neuroscience, 13(3):452-475.

The purpose of this study is to improve the classification of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals for motor imagery-based brain-computer interfaces (MI-BCIs), thus enabling more reliable user interactions in assistive technologies such as autonomous wheelchairs. The study contributes by systematically investigating and comparing the performance of both simple (Transformer, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)) and hybrid deep learning architectures (Transformer + CNN, Transformer + LSTM, CNN + LSTM) for EEG signal classification using multiple evaluation metrics, including accuracy, ROC AUC, confusion matrices, and prediction time. The findings demonstrate that the Transformer + CNN hybrid model consistently outperforms all other architectures, thereby achieving perfect classification accuracy (1.00), zero misclassifications, flawless AUC scores (1.000), and a competitive inference time (1.17 s), thus making it highly suitable for real-time MI-BCI applications. In contrast, simple models, particularly LSTM, show lower accuracies and reduced stabilities. Overall, this study highlights the advantage of combining attention mechanisms and convolutional architectures to effectively capture both spatial and contextual patterns in nonstationary EEG signals, thus establishing Transformer-based hybrid models as a promising approach for robust, real-time EEG classifications in next-generation MI-BCI systems.

RevDate: 2026-10-15
CmpDate: 2026-10-14

Wang S, Wu Q, Lei Q, et al (2026)

Brain-computer interfaces in pediatric populations: research advances, application challenges, and future directions.

Frontiers in pediatrics, 14:1936801.

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) establish direct communication pathways between the brain and external devices. Leveraging the unique neuroplasticity of the developing brain, BCIs have emerged as a novel rehabilitative technology for children with neurodevelopmental disorders, including cerebral palsy, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and perinatal brain injury. This review comprehensively examines five major BCI paradigms-P300, motor imagery (MI), steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEP), functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and multimodal hybrid systems-with respect to their pediatric adaptability, technical limitations, and optimization strategies. We summarize the existing evidence across four key clinical applications: augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), motor function rehabilitation, ADHD attention training, and ASD social-emotional intervention. Key intrinsic (cognitive and physiological) and extrinsic (device and environmental) variables affecting BCI performance in children are analyzed, along with general optimization approaches including personalized parameter tuning, pre-training neurofeedback, and lightweight hardware modifications. Furthermore, we examine multilayer barriers to pediatric BCI adoption, including user experience, clinical workforce readiness, translational pathways, and child-specific ethical considerations. Preliminary evidence suggests that non-invasive BCIs can be feasibly used in children above 5 years of age, although this finding is based on short-term studies with small sample sizes and requires further validation through larger longitudinal trials. However, the immature pediatric brain, short attention spans, and low device tolerance preclude direct translation of adult BCI systems. While evidence is more established for AAC and motor rehabilitation in cerebral palsy, large-scale long-term data are still lacking for ADHD and ASD interventions. Future efforts should prioritize child-specific lightweight wearable devices, multicenter longitudinal trials, immersive integration with virtual reality (VR) and social robots, standardized clinical service frameworks, and ethical guidelines for invasive pediatric BCIs, thereby facilitating the transition of BCI technology from laboratory to clinical and home settings and maximizing its value in promoting neurodevelopmental plasticity in children with special needs.

RevDate: 2026-10-14

Pan H, Ding P, Wang F, et al (2026)

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Recognition Using the fNIRS Dual-Attention Network.

Journal of neuroscience methods pii:S0165-0270(26)00255-4 [Epub ahead of print].

BACKGROUND: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent psychological disorder that can impair daily functioning and mental health. Current clinical assessment mainly relies on structured interviews and symptom scales, which may introduce subjectivity and inter-rater variability. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) provides a noninvasive approach for measuring task-evoked hemodynamic responses and may offer objective physiological information for auxiliary PTSD recognition.

NEW METHOD: This study proposes an end-to-end deep learning framework, the fNIRS Dual Attention Network (FDANet), for PTSD recognition. Ten PTSD patients and ten healthy controls (HC) were recruited, and prefrontal hemodynamic signals, including oxyhemoglobin (HbO), deoxyhemoglobin (HbR), and total hemoglobin (HbT), were recorded during fear and neutral facial-expression stimuli. The three hemodynamic signals were concatenated along the channel dimension to form the model input. FDANet combines Transformer-based temporal modeling, one-dimensional temporal-channel attention, and convolutional feature extraction to learn discriminative representations from multichannel fNIRS signals.

RESULTS: The model was evaluated using subject-wise nested cross-validation with five outer folds. At the trial level, FDANet achieved an accuracy of 79.4%. At the subject level, FDANet achieved an accuracy of 95.0%.

Compared with the evaluated traditional machine-learning and deep-learning baseline methods, FDANet achieved higher classification accuracy at both trial and subject levels.

CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that task-evoked prefrontal fNIRS signals contain discriminative information for PTSD recognition. Given the portability and noninvasive measurement characteristics of fNIRS, FDANet may support the future development of objective auxiliary screening tools for PTSD, although further validation with larger and independent samples is required.

RevDate: 2026-10-16
CmpDate: 2026-10-15

Schilling A, P Krauss (2026)

Can artificial systems become conscious?-Recursive embodied closure as an integrative framework.

Frontiers in psychology, 17:1950309.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence, connectomics, and computational neuroscience increasingly raise the question of whether artificial systems-or even pure computer simulations-could become conscious. Contemporary theories emphasize embodiment, predictive processing, homeostatic regulation, and continuous interaction between cognition, body, and environment rather than isolated computation. We propose recursive embodied closure as an integrative framework linking embodied, predictive, functionalist, and dynamical approaches to consciousness. Rather than replacing existing theories, the framework identifies a shared organizational principle: the continuous recursive coupling of cognition, bodily regulation, action, and environmental feedback. We argue that consciousness may, in principle, emerge in artificial systems, including computational simulations, for three reasons. First, consciousness may depend on recursively closed loops linking cognition, body, and environment, and such loops could also be realized in robotic, neuromorphic, or virtual embodiments. Second, evidence from comparative neuroscience, convergent evolution, neurotechnology, and philosophy of mind suggests that the mechanisms relevant for consciousness are largely substrate-independent and may therefore be implemented in both biological and artificial systems. Third, although unknown physical mechanisms cannot be excluded, there is currently no empirical evidence for biological processes that are uniquely necessary for consciousness. Taken together, these considerations support the view that consciousness is best understood as an emergent property of recursively embodied, environmentally embedded cognitive systems rather than of biological matter itself. If so, biological brains, artificial neural networks, neuromorphic hardware, and even virtual agents may constitute plausible candidates for future artificial consciousness.

RevDate: 2026-10-16
CmpDate: 2026-10-15

Park W, Mansour S, Kim L, et al (2026)

Decoding user satisfaction during reading of pre-defined question-answer pairs: BCI approach using delta and gamma EEG.

Frontiers in neuroscience, 20:1934150.

INTRODUCTION: The rapid proliferation of large language models (LLMs) has intensified the need for robust evaluation frameworks to align artificial intelligence (AI) behavior with human expectations. While current reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) strategies heavily rely on explicit, post-hoc self-reports, these metrics are fundamentally limited by subjective biases and user non-compliance.

METHODS: To address this, the current study presents a novel brain-computer interface (BCI) framework that systematically characterizes the continuous, implicit neural correlates of user satisfaction and dissatisfaction during a reading-based evaluative task involving pre-validated LLM-generated question-answer pairs. Sixty-four-channel electroencephalography (EEG) data were recorded from 30 participants while they read and evaluated various LLM-generated responses. To capture genuine subjective experiences, individual trials were relabeled based on post-trial 5-point Likert scale ratings into five distinct evaluative states, and spatiotemporal spectral analyses were performed. A ShallowFBCSPNet architecture was further used to evaluate single-trial classification between the very satisfied and very dissatisfied conditions under a subject-mixed cross-validation scheme.

RESULTS: Spatiotemporal spectral analyses revealed distinct neural oscillatory dynamics that temporally dissociate satisfaction and dissatisfaction. When reading highly satisfactory responses, a pronounced, sustained enhancement of low-frequency delta power was observed within the bilateral frontotemporal areas during the middle (4-8 s) and late (8-12 s) reading intervals, indexing high-order cognitive consolidation and reward processing. Conversely, processing highly dissatisfactory responses led to a localized suppression of high-frequency gamma power in the right frontotemporal region during the early interval (0-4 s), reflecting an immediate affective appraisal and expectation violation. Utilizing the ShallowFBCSPNet architecture, the system successfully discriminated between the "very satisfied" and "very dissatisfied" states, achieving an average accuracy of 81% under a subject-mixed cross-validation scheme.

DISCUSSION: These findings demonstrate that user evaluative states are encoded via distinct frequency-specific cortical networks over differing temporal windows. By bridging cognitive neuroscience and artificial intelligence, this study establishes the conceptual and empirical foundation for passive BCI-driven implicit feedback channels, laying groundwork toward future real-time paradigms for next-generation LLM alignment; the classification result should be interpreted as a feasibility demonstration rather than an estimate of real-world decoding accuracy.

RevDate: 2026-10-14

Tang E, Zhang S, Qin W, et al (2026)

Attenuated attention engagement and sensorimotor resonance to social events in first-episode adolescent depression: Evidence from EEG oscillations.

Journal of affective disorders, 417:122620 pii:S0165-0327(26)01474-6 [Epub ahead of print].

BACKGROUND: Depressive symptoms may disrupt social brain development during adolescence, resulting in adverse long-term quality of life. Yet, little is known regarding the cognitive and neural changes during the processing of social interactions in adolescents with first-episode depression, particularly from an allocentric perspective.

METHODS: We used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess two neural indicators during the observation of others' interactions, including sensorimotor mu suppression and occipital alpha-band activity, in 22 adolescents with first-episode major depressive disorder (MDD) and 23 healthy counterparts. Participants observed animated motions wherein actions were directed toward animate (human-like) or inanimate (rock) targets, comprising social (giving) and kinematically matched control events (disposing, taking and acquiring).

RESULTS: Healthy controls (HCs) exhibited stronger central-parietal mu suppression in the lower sub-band during observation of socially interactive giving events than disposing events. In contrast, adolescents with MDD manifested no corresponding difference in mu suppression. Additionally, depressive adolescents demonstrated significantly higher occipital alpha power when viewing social (patient) than non-social (rock) targets, and this alpha power was significantly higher than that observed in HCs. Exploratory correlation analyses revealed that attenuated sensorimotor resonance of social interactions was significantly associated with increased severity of depressive symptoms in the MDD group.

CONCLUSIONS: Adolescents with first-episode depression showed difficulties in efficiently encoding social information and implicitly extracting the social-relational meaning of observed social interactions. These findings critically extend current understanding of neurocognitive mechanisms underlying social cognitive alterations in this population, and provide potential avenues for early screening and targeted interventions of social functioning impairment in adolescence.

RevDate: 2026-10-12

Chen F, Wang Q, Wang L, et al (2026)

Simulated responses from large language models are weak proxies for human economic preferences across 74 countries.

Nature human behaviour [Epub ahead of print].

Large-scale surveys are central to investigating economic preferences but are costly and slow. Can large language model (LLM)-simulated responses substitute for human survey data? We conducted a virtual Global Preference Survey, simulating six experimentally validated economic preferences for 67,201 matched human respondents across 74 countries. Across 20 LLM configurations with diverse prompts and robustness checks, we found systematic but modest individual-level alignment (87.5% of Spearman correlations have 95% confidence intervals (CIs) above zero), with LLMs recovering the direction of associations in 77.8% (95% CI, (71.6%, 83.1%); CI-based consistency ratio) of gender, age and cognitive-ability dimensions, but only 48.1% (95% CI, (45.1%, 51.2%)) of cultural dimensions. Ablation and error decompositions suggest weaker alignment when removing demographic information than when removing country labels, and in many models alignment is weaker in economically undeveloped and less digitally connected countries. LLM-simulated responses may recover some individual- and group-level patterns but are not yet reliable proxies for cross-national representative surveys in macro-level inference or policy evaluation.

RevDate: 2026-10-14
CmpDate: 2026-10-13

Lee AH, Lee J, Leung V, et al (2026)

Distributed implantable microchips as wireless networks for neural sensing and stimulation.

Frontiers in neuroscience, 20:1855768.

We examine ongoing research for implantable sensors and stimulators for future brain-computer applications and give a review on the concept where grain-of-sand size silicon microchips form the individual nodes in a multichannel wireless implant. In such an approach, each chip can perform the function of a stand-alone independent sensor if equipped with active microelectronic circuits designed to detect or stimulate target populations of neurons and capability for wireless communication. Delivering power to individual as well as spatially distributed ensembles of microchips requires a method for efficient transcutaneous/transcranial wireless energy transfer approach. Here we offer examples from authors' experience and comparisons to contemporary approaches as well as the challenges ahead in developing clinically viable wireless cortical chip-in-the-brain interfaces.

RevDate: 2026-10-14
CmpDate: 2026-10-13

Trocellier D, Kojima S, N'kaoua B, et al (2026)

Visual cues in MI-BCI induce biases in EEG classification models with deep learning but not with standard machine learning.

Frontiers in neuroergonomics, 7:1804143.

OBJECTIVE: Deep learning classification methods are increasingly popular in the brain-computer interface (BCI) field due to their ability to learn complex, non-linear representations from EEG data. Unlike traditional machine learning approaches, which typically rely on hand-crafted features, deep learning models autonomously extract spatio-temporal features directly from the raw or minimally preprocessed signal. However, this flexibility may come at the cost of reduced interpretability and increased susceptibility to confounding factors. This study aims to investigate whether the inclusion of task-related visual cues in the input EEG window biases deep learning models by leading them to exploit irrelevant features, thereby compromising their neurophysiological validity.

APPROACH: This study investigates how including EEG signals measured during visual cue presentation on classification accuracy and feature extraction in motor imagery (MI)-based BCIs. Three classification pipelines were evaluated: CSP+LDA, a traditional machine learning approach; DeepConvNet, a convolutional neural network for EEG classification; and REVE, a Transformer-based EEG foundation model. All methods are trained and tested on two large scale open-access EEG datasets using two epoching strategies, with or without including the visual cue onset, to assess their impact on model performance and neurophysiological relevance. Attribution maps (e.g., Saliency maps) and CSP patterns are used to interpret the features learned by each model.

MAIN RESULTS: Including the visual cue onset significantly improved the classification accuracy of DeepConvNet and REVE. However, attribution analysis showed that the model mainly relied on early parietal activations, most likely cue-related visual evoked potentials, rather than MI-related sensorimotor rhythms (ERD/ERS), which were more prominent when the cue onset was excluded. In contrast, CSP+LDA showed minimal accuracy changes across conditions, with consistent motor cortex activation patterns.

SIGNIFICANCE: These findings demonstrate that higher classification performance does not necessarily imply neurophysiological validity. In particular, deep learning models may exploit confounding signals, such as visual cue processing, which undermines their interpretability and applicability in asynchronous or real-world BCIs, in which there is no such cue. We advocate for systematically applying explainability tools in BCI research to ensure classifiers rely on task-relevant brain activity. Additionally, we emphasize the importance of excluding visual cue periods from EEG segments containing reposenses evoked by the visual cue onset from the input to deep learning models.

RevDate: 2026-10-14

Zhou C, Ding X, Zhao J, et al (2026)

Terahertz liquid networks: a mesoscopic passive architecture for circumventing physical deadlocks in brain-computer interfaces.

Nanoscale advances [Epub ahead of print].

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) for major neurological disorders face physical and physiological limitations. Mechanical mismatch in rigid microelectrode arrays precipitates chronic immune rejection and irreversible central nervous system damage, whereas bandwidth scaling in traditional wireless links inevitably breaches the 1 °C tissue thermal safety threshold. To circumvent this deadlock among bandwidth, heat dissipation, and biocompatibility, this review proposes the "terahertz liquid network" architecture. Utilizing injectable plasmonic nanoparticles as free-floating relay nodes, this architecture fundamentally abolishes the mechanical shear stresses characteristic of conventional implant interfaces. Exploiting broadband and dielectric properties of terahertz (THz) waves, the network achieves cross-scale bioelectronic integration across both physical and physiological boundaries. For communication and decoding, the system bypasses the strong THz absorption barrier of brain tissue via non-line-of-sight multipath scattering and THz-photoacoustic cross-modal transduction. Integrating these mechanisms with passive backscattering fulfills the terabits-per-second (Tbps) absolute bandwidth requirements dictated by full-cortical, high-fidelity motor decoding. For neuromodulation, specific THz photon energies are directed at voltage-gated ion channels to induce targeted non-thermal resonance, mediating precise, subcellular-level interventions devoid of macroscopic current overflow. Through an analysis of typical clinical scenarios-namely, audiovisual perception reconstruction and physical neural injury rehabilitation-this review demonstrates the feasibility of this architecture in resolving the conflict between high-throughput concurrency and stringent physiological constraints. Ultimately, the terahertz liquid network reconfigures the neural interface paradigm from a macroscopic active solid-state to a mesoscopic passive liquid-state. This transition grants the system superior biocompatibility and endows it with disease-modifying potential targeting underlying pathologies, establishing a trajectory for next-generation BCIs.

RevDate: 2026-10-13
CmpDate: 2026-10-13

Hassan ST, Faheem MSB, Yaqubi AJ, et al (2026)

Brain-computer interfaces and neuroprostheses for severe speech impairment in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Annals of medicine and surgery (2012), 88(10):6221-6224.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a relentlessly progressive neurodegenerative disorder that frequently culminates in severe dysarthria and anarthria, profoundly isolating patients and diminishing their quality of life. Traditional speech therapy and conventional augmentative and alternative communication devices rely on residual motor control and become ineffective in late-stage ALS. In response, brain-computer interfaces and speech neuroprostheses have emerged as transformative solutions. By decoding neural signals directly from the motor cortex and translating them into synthesized speech, these devices bypass compromised neuromuscular pathways. Recent high-impact clinical trials have demonstrated unprecedented success, achieving high-speed decoding and integrating artificial intelligence-driven voice banking to preserve a patient's unique vocal identity. However, significant translational challenges remain, including signal degradation, surgical risks, high socioeconomic costs, and ethical dilemmas regarding patient autonomy and data privacy. This perspective reviews the current state-of-the-art in speech neuroprosthetics, analyzes the barriers to widespread clinical implementation, and advocates for increased interdisciplinary collaboration and funding to establish these technologies as a standard of care for patients with severe speech impairments.

RevDate: 2026-10-13
CmpDate: 2026-10-13

Hamard R, Hug F, TJM Dick (2026)

Passive ankle exoskeleton assistance selectively modulates triceps surae neural control during balance.

Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 23(243):.

Wearable assistive devices have potential to improve human balance, but their effectiveness remains limited by an incomplete understanding of how mechanical assistance influences neuromuscular control. This study aimed to determine the neural adaptations in the control of lower leg muscles in response to passive ankle exoskeleton assistance during standing balance tasks with varying levels of difficulty. Lower limb kinematics and kinetics were recorded to assess changes in joint dynamics and balance performance. Neural drive to the muscles was assessed by decomposing high-density electromyography signals into motor unit spike trains. Ankle exoskeleton assistance, provided by a simple spring-loaded passive device, did not alter or improve balance performance and had minimal effects on lower limb kinematics. However, exoskeleton assistance affected triceps surae neural control, but only in the soleus, by reducing neural drive, while the gastrocnemii showed no detectable changes in neural control. Together, these results demonstrate that passive exoskeleton assistance alters neural control of the triceps surae in a muscle-specific manner during balance. Understanding muscle-specific adaptations can support more effective exoskeleton design and the development of their control strategies informed by myoelectrical signals.

RevDate: 2026-10-12

Palthe S, van Merode NAM, Kolenburg J, et al (2026)

Bladder Contractility Classification Before Bladder Outlet Surgery: Do BCI, Wmax and the Maastricht-Hannover Nomogram Agree and Does It Matter for Outcome?.

Neurourology and urodynamics [Epub ahead of print].

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to assess the concordance between three classification systems (bladder contractility index, Maximum Watt's factor and Maastricht-Hannover nomogram) in allocating men to bladder contractility subgroups. Secondary aim was to explore whether preoperative contractility classification was associated with short-term flowmetry outcomes after BOP.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This multicenter retrospective cohort study included men who underwent BOP (2010-2016) for lower urinary tract symptoms with available baseline urodynamic study and 6-week postoperative flowmetry. Patients were classified according to BCI, Wmax and MH-nomogram into very weak (BCI < 50, Wmax < 5, MH-nomogram < 10th percentile), weak (BCI: 50-100, Wmax: 5-10, MH-nomogram 10-25th percentile) and normal detrusor contractility (BCI > 100, Wmax > 10, MH-nomogram > 25th percentile) subgroups. Concordance was quantified using percentage agreement and Cohen's linear weighted kappa (κ). Postoperative flowmetry outcomes were compared between subgroups within each classification and pre-postoperative differences were determined for each subgroup.

RESULTS: One hundred and thirty three patients were included (median age 69 years). Agreement was highest between BCI and Wmax (78.9%, κ = 0.61, substantial), while agreement was weak between Wmax and MH-nomogram (48.9%, κ = 0.31) and negligible between BCI and MH-nomogram (37.6%, κ = 0.05). All subgroups showed improvement Qmax and PVR parameters after BOP, with no significant association found between preoperative contractility grade and postoperative outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS: BCI, Wmax and the MH-nomogram show only limited concordance, particularly involving the MH-nomogram, and cannot be regarded as interchangeable. Contractility classification was not associated with postoperative outcomes, and all subgroups improved after BOP. These findings underscore the need for a clinically relevant urodynamic consensus definition of DU and support shared decision-making over classification-based patient selection alone.

RevDate: 2026-10-12

Ma Y, Li Y, Zhang S, et al (2026)

Emerging promise in artificial vision research: Unveiling transformative potential through brain-computer interfaces.

Neural networks : the official journal of the International Neural Network Society, 206(Pt A):109693 pii:S0893-6080(26)01148-2 [Epub ahead of print].

Brain-computer interface (BCI) technology has driven revolutionary advancements in the field of artificial vision, presenting new opportunities for individuals with visual impairments. This review summarizes the key technological developments, clinical applications, and future challenges of BCI in artificial vision. In the domain of signal acquisition, both invasive techniques (such as MEA, ECoG, and DBS) and non-invasive techniques (including EEG, MEG, fMRI, and fNIRS) have significantly improved signal resolution and stability. Advances in visual encoding have facilitated the more efficient transmission of visual information. Input BCIs, including technologies based on SSVEP and P300, as well as output BCIs involving motor and speech decoding, are progressing rapidly. Clinically, third-generation retinal prostheses (such as Argus II and PRIMA) have helped patients with retinal degenerative diseases regain partial light perception. Based on closed-loop neural feedback, it is expected to help patients with cortical blindness achieve the remodeling of the optic nerve. Nevertheless, technical challenges remain, particularly regarding the long-term stability of neural signals and biocompatibility issues. Emerging solutions such as anti-scarring nanocoatings, self-powered wireless systems, neuromorphic spike encoding, and multimodal sensory integration are addressing several of these challenges. Looking ahead, advancements in neuro-augmented reality are expected to further propel progress in the field. The future of BCI development will depends on continued interdisciplinary collaboration and global cooperation to drive innovation and provide more efficient, accessible visual restoration solutions for patients.

RevDate: 2026-10-12

Wang C, Ding J, Qi X, et al (2026)

Medial prefrontal cortex circuitry in inflammation-associated major depressive disorder: Brain-immune interactions and translational rationale for noninvasive neuromodulation.

Asian journal of psychiatry, 125:105181 pii:S1876-2018(26)00354-0 [Epub ahead of print].

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability worldwide, characterized by marked clinical and biological heterogeneity. Inflammation represents one key mechanism contributing to MDD, with a substantial proportion of patients exhibiting elevated inflammatory biomarkers. Inflammatory signaling affects neurotransmitter systems and neural circuits involved in reward, motivation, arousal, and threat processing, thereby linking to neurovegetative and motivational symptoms and reduced treatment responsiveness. The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is a recurring node across inflammation-related symptom dimensions and provides a tractable focus for examining how inflammatory burden intersects with prefrontal, striatal, and limbic dysfunction. Sex may further moderate this brain-immune relationship through differences in stress susceptibility, brain structure and function, and inflammatory activity. Given the inconsistent effects of anti-inflammatory agents, noninvasive neuromodulation offers a targeted strategy for inflammation-associated MDD. Bottom-up transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation may regulate autonomic-immune signaling and ascending network pathways, whereas top-down high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation may modulate prefrontal plasticity and engage mPFC-centered circuitry. In this review, we synthesize evidence on peripheral and central inflammatory involvement in MDD, with emphasis on mPFC-centered circuit vulnerability and sex as a moderator of brain-immune interactions, and evaluate the translational rationale for complementary bottom-up and top-down stimulation in patients with elevated inflammatory burden. We also highlight key priorities for future research, including patient enrichment, outcome alignment, target engagement, parameter optimization, and sex-related variables to advance precision and stratified therapeutics in depression.

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RJR Experience and Expertise

Researcher

Robbins holds BS, MS, and PhD degrees in the life sciences. He served as a tenured faculty member in the Zoology and Biological Science departments at Michigan State University. He is currently exploring the intersection between genomics, microbial ecology, and biodiversity — an area that promises to transform our understanding of the biosphere.

Educator

Robbins has extensive experience in college-level education: At MSU he taught introductory biology, genetics, and population genetics. At JHU, he was an instructor for a special course on biological database design. At FHCRC, he team-taught a graduate-level course on the history of genetics. At Bellevue College he taught medical informatics.

Administrator

Robbins has been involved in science administration at both the federal and the institutional levels. At NSF he was a program officer for database activities in the life sciences, at DOE he was a program officer for information infrastructure in the human genome project. At the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, he served as a vice president for fifteen years.

Technologist

Robbins has been involved with information technology since writing his first Fortran program as a college student. At NSF he was the first program officer for database activities in the life sciences. At JHU he held an appointment in the CS department and served as director of the informatics core for the Genome Data Base. At the FHCRC he was VP for Information Technology.

Publisher

While still at Michigan State, Robbins started his first publishing venture, founding a small company that addressed the short-run publishing needs of instructors in very large undergraduate classes. For more than 20 years, Robbins has been operating The Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project, a web site dedicated to the digital publishing of critical works in science, especially classical genetics.

Speaker

Robbins is well-known for his speaking abilities and is often called upon to provide keynote or plenary addresses at international meetings. For example, in July, 2012, he gave a well-received keynote address at the Global Biodiversity Informatics Congress, sponsored by GBIF and held in Copenhagen. The slides from that talk can be seen HERE.

Facilitator

Robbins is a skilled meeting facilitator. He prefers a participatory approach, with part of the meeting involving dynamic breakout groups, created by the participants in real time: (1) individuals propose breakout groups; (2) everyone signs up for one (or more) groups; (3) the groups with the most interested parties then meet, with reports from each group presented and discussed in a subsequent plenary session.

Designer

Robbins has been engaged with photography and design since the 1960s, when he worked for a professional photography laboratory. He now prefers digital photography and tools for their precision and reproducibility. He designed his first web site more than 20 years ago and he personally designed and implemented this web site. He engages in graphic design as a hobby.

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Rajesh Rao has written the perfect introduction to the exciting world of brain-computer interfaces. The book is remarkably comprehensive — not only including full descriptions of classic and current experiments but also covering essential background concepts, from the brain to Bayes and back. Brain-Computer Interfacing will be welcomed by a wide range of intelligent readers interested in understanding the first steps toward the symbiotic merger of brains and computers. Eberhard E. Fetz, UW

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Collection of publications by R J Robbins

Reprints and preprints of publications, slide presentations, instructional materials, and data compilations written or prepared by Robert Robbins. Most papers deal with computational biology, genome informatics, using information technology to support biomedical research, and related matters.

Research Gate page for R J Robbins

ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a study by Nature and an article in Times Higher Education , it is the largest academic social network in terms of active users.

Curriculum Vitae for R J Robbins

short personal version

Curriculum Vitae for R J Robbins

long standard version

RJR Picks from Around the Web (updated 11 MAY 2018 )