Regional reportWhere is it happening?
Middle East, Latin America and Africa
A steady share of the published literature, spread across the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. We profile one organisation here, and it is not a BCI company.
Reported together because indexed activity is still thin; split out when it is not.
Growing steadilyConfidence high
Research trajectory, from scholarly works by author country: +15% a year over the latest three years, +14% in the three before. Data as of 8 Oct 2026.
Field snapshot
- 318
- scholarly works in 2025
- 9% of the world count; 10% in 2019
- 126
- PubMed papers in 2025
- held as individual records
- 2
- registered studies open now
- 1 with an implanted interface
- 1
- company profiled
- in 1 country
- –
- disclosed in recorded rounds
- 0 rounds; a sample
- 1
- regulatory milestones recorded
- kept apart by type
Profiled companies at their headquarters, from the year each was founded.
1 marks on the companies layer in 2026, Middle East, Latin America and Africa. Hover a mark, or use the list.
Marks are records, not decoration. Country marks sit at the centre of the country, not at an institution. Mark area follows the count, so a few large countries dominate; use the region zoom to read the rest. 3 profiled companies have not disclosed a location and are not placed. 36 countries with a small number of works have no position recorded and are not drawn. Clinical counts come from ClinicalTrials.gov and under-count studies outside the United States.
Research momentum
Authors in Middle East, Latin America and Africa published 318 scholarly works on brain-computer interfaces in 2025, +22% on the year before. Over the latest three years output grew +15% a year, against +14% in the three years before; the world as a whole grew +23% a year.
| Year | Middle East, Latin America and Africa |
|---|---|
| 2010 | 21 |
| 2011 | 15 |
| 2012 | 22 |
| 2013 | 53 |
| 2014 | 48 |
| 2015 | 57 |
| 2016 | 73 |
| 2017 | 88 |
| 2018 | 109 |
| 2019 | 142 |
| 2020 | 185 |
| 2021 | 218 |
| 2022 | 208 |
| 2023 | 223 |
| 2024 | 261 |
| 2025 | 318 |
| 2026 | 263 |
| Country | 2025 | Growth a year | Trajectory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Iran | 58 | +9% | Growing steadily |
| Saudi Arabia | 42 | +14% | Slowing |
| Turkey | 40 | +6% | Slowing |
| Brazil | 30 | +6% | Growing steadily |
| Iraq | 25 | +46% | Emerging |
| Egypt | 23 | +37% | Emerging |
| United Arab Emirates | 21 | +33% | Emerging |
| Colombia | 18 | +14% | Slowing |
| Israel | 15 | +36% | Emerging |
| Ecuador | 10 | +49% | Emerging |
| Nigeria | 10 | +115% | Emerging |
| South Africa | 8 | −13% | Declining |
Countries with at least five works in 2025. A work with authors in several countries counts once in each.
Companies and initiatives
- BrainQ
Jerusalem, Israel
A wearable device that applies frequency-tuned electromagnetic fields in the weeks after a stroke, to reduce disability.
Neuromodulation
Clinical programmes
ClinicalTrials.gov lists 2 open studies with a site in Middle East, Latin America and Africa, 1 of them involving an implanted interface. 2 studies started in 2025.
- 9 May 2025UAE-PRIMENeuralink · NCT06992596Cleveland Clinic Abu DhabiRecruiting
Capital
No funding round is recorded for a company headquartered here. Public grants, which fund much of the work in several regions, are not tracked yet.
Regulatory environment
Regulation differs by country and we have not surveyed it.
- 11 Feb 2021BrainQ receives Breakthrough Device designationUS FDA · Breakthrough Device designationA designation speeds interaction with the regulator. It is not a clearance or approval, and the device is a stimulation therapy, not a BCI.
Institutions in the corpus
Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Institutions appear here because a profiled study or paper names them. It is not a ranking, and many active groups are missing.
Latest developments
- 1 Oct 2025BrainQ EMAGINE is published: stopped early at 100 of 150 planned participants; the difference in disability at 90 days favoured active stimulation and was not statistically significant.
- 20 Aug 2024BrainQ EMAGINE 2.0 begins recruiting; 122 participants planned.
- 16 May 2024BrainQ Company announces EMAGINE results at a stroke congress: treated patients were, in its words, more than twice as likely to be free from disability at three months.
- 4 Dec 2021BrainQ EMAGINE begins at US centres. It enrols 100 participants.
- 11 Feb 2021BrainQ FDA Breakthrough Device designation, according to the company.
- 4 Sep 2018BrainQ A study in acute stroke begins in New Delhi. It is later terminated with 28 participants.
Open questions and outlook
- Neural interfaces as consumer productsDoes the first mass-market neural interface read the brain at all?1–2 years · confidence moderate
Forward-looking judgements by The BCI Briefing, with their reasoning on the Trends page. Uncertain by nature.
What we cannot see here
- We index publications and registered studies and profile one organisation: a stroke-therapy company in Israel whose registry entries use the term BCI. The three areas are reported together only because what we hold is thin; they are not one ecosystem.
Known to us, not yet verified
- Israeli neural-interface companies
- Brazilian and Iranian academic BCI groups
Leads are pointers for us to check: a study sponsor in a registry, a name in a report. They say nothing yet about what an organisation does, and none is counted anywhere on this site until it has a profile with sources.
Sources cited for this region’s profiles are in English.