Skip to content
The BCI Briefing

Clinical3 min read

A European implant sends brain data out by light

ABILITY Neurotech, a Geneva spin-out, is testing a battery-free ECoG implant with an infrared data link during surgery in Germany, and plans a one-year home study in people with ALS in Utrecht.

ByThe BCI Briefing

Evidence class: Independent verification

The short version

  • The implant streams raw signals from 128-channel surface arrays through the skin by infrared light, at a reported 50 megabits per second.
  • It has no battery: power comes from outside the head.
  • Recordings so far are brief and intraoperative. A one-year home-use study in people with ALS is planned for late 2026 at UMC Utrecht.

IEEE Spectrum reported on 20 August that ABILITY Neurotech has begun recording from its implant in patients undergoing brain tumour surgery in Germany, in sessions of 20 to 30 minutes, with later stages planned in which up to five awake patients perform speech and movement tasks.

The company, spun out of the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in 2025, says a Dutch medical ethics committee has approved the device dossier for a chronic study. That study is planned for late 2026 at University Medical Center Utrecht with Graz University of Technology and CorTec, and would follow participants with ALS using the system at home for a year.

How solid is this

Independent reporting by IEEE Spectrum, including an outside researcher's caution that performance over several years is what matters for an implant. The ethics approval is stated by the company and by the institute it came from; we have not seen a registry entry for the chronic study. No human performance data have been published. The data rate and channel count are design specifications.

Independent reporting. Reported by a news organisation or trade publication independent of the subject.

What to watch

  1. 01Registration and start of the Utrecht study.
  2. 02First published recordings from the intraoperative work.
  3. 03Evidence on how the optical link behaves through skin over months of daily use.

This technology remains experimental and is not an established treatment. Access is limited to registered clinical studies.

Sources

  1. 01

    Ability Neurotech Infrared BCI to Begin Human Trials (opens in a new tab)

    Independent reportingIEEE Spectrum20 Aug 2026Checked against source 4 Oct 2026

    Reports the intraoperative study, the planned Utrecht study, the device specifications and an outside researcher's caution about long-term performance.

  2. 02

    ABILITY Neurotech Receives Approval to Start Clinical Trial (opens in a new tab)

    Company reportedWyss Center for Bio and NeuroengineeringChecked against source 4 Oct 2026

    Announcement by the institute the company was spun out of. The page carries no date.

  3. 03

    Vansteensel MJ et al. N Engl J Med 2016;375(21):2060–2066 (opens in a new tab)

    Peer reviewedNew England Journal of Medicine12 Nov 2016Checked against source 3 Oct 2026

    DOI 10.1056/NEJMoa1608085