Post by Brainlab

What if thoughts could move a cursor? 🧠 That’s what neurosurgeons and researchers have been working towards with Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs). This once distant dream is already a reality with one patient in particular at the center of research in Europe. Michi Mehringer, 26, has been living with quadriplegia since a serious motorcycle accident ten years ago. Today, thanks to 256 microelectrodes implanted in his brain and AI-based signal decoding, he has become the first patient in Europe to control a computer cursor using only his thoughts. Our CEO Rainer Birkenbach had the pleasure of speaking at last week’s DLD Conference x BAIOSPHERE in Munich, about the Brainlab digital solutions shaping the future of medicine, including BCIs. Rainer was joined by Prof. Dr. Bernhard Meyer and Prof. Simon Jacob from the Department of Neurosurgery at TUM Klinikum Rechts der Isar, Georg Starke from Technical University of Munich, Prof. Lorenzo Masia, Director of the Munich Institute for Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) at Technical University of Munich, and Caroline Emmer De Albuquerque Green, Director of Research at the Institute for Ethics in AI at University of Oxford—alongside Michi himself, whose positivity and optimism about this technology are inspiring. In cranial surgery, every step matters—from the very first planning session to the final moment in the O.R. True surgical success begins with diligent preoperative planning: together with our partner Nexstim, nTMS in experienced hands allows critical brain surface areas for a BCI implant to be identified and mapped with high precision, without a single incision. Our intelligent navigation technology then connects each link in this chain, guiding the surgical team through every subsequent step of the workflow with the attention to detail that patients deserve. Because only when every piece falls into place, in the right order and at the right quality, does the full clinical impact become reality. For patients like Michi, that reality is the difference between limitation and possibility. What connected everyone on that stage was a shared belief: that when medicine, technology and human determination come together, the impossible becomes possible. Watch the full DLD talk below. 👇 https://lnkd.in/es_Y_5iT #MedTech #Neurosurgery #BrainComputerInterface #Innovation Images: (2) Vlada Labzeyeva, (4) Philipp Guelland, all other images by Brainlab