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(reporter kong tianjiao and tan qixin from people's daily health client) "the brain-computer interface implants electrodes into the brain and uses electric current to allow the chip and nerve cells to interact. for some blind people with eye defects or congenital vision defects, as long as the occipital visual cortex is normal, they have hope of restoring their visual function through this device." on september 21, xu bin, chief physician of neurosurgery at huashan hospital affiliated to fudan university, told reporters from people's daily health client that this technology has opened up a new treatment path for blind patients.

on september 17, musk's brain-computer interface company neuralink announced that its "blindsight" device has been certified as a breakthrough medical device by the u.s. food and drug administration (fda). the device is implanted in the brain in an invasive way and can directly stimulate the visual cortex. the fda will provide communication services on device development, clinical trial priority review, review team support, and product commercialization decision-making for products awarded the title of "breakthrough medical device", thereby promoting the listing process of innovative medical devices.

xu bin explained, "the head-mounted camera device at the front end can replace the eyes, converting the video signal into the electrical signal of the electrode, simulating the conventional bioelectrical signal generated by the normal visual conduction pathway, and finally presenting the corresponding scene by stimulating the visual cortex. the premise is that the visual center is relatively healthy. at this time, the role played by the visual cortex is similar to the ccd of a digital camera, that is, the charge-coupled device."

"in theory, if the video signal sensed by the front end is infrared, ultraviolet or even radar signal that is invisible to the ordinary human eye, after installing such a chip, it can even see spectrum or electromagnetic wave signals that are invisible to ordinary people. implanting a chip can activate a large number of visual neurons that were previously idle due to lesions in the visual organs or the front-end conduction pathways. the degree of perception depends on the degree of refinement of the chip and electrodes. as the resolution of future generations of equipment continues to increase, the treatment effect is expected to be further improved. if the visual cortex has been damaged due to trauma, stroke, etc., the effect of the treatment will be poor." xu bin added.

at present, the potential of brain-computer interface in the medical field has been preliminarily confirmed, and clinical research and commercial transformation in the field of brain-computer interface in china have achieved frequent results.parkinson's diseaseandepilepsythe feasibility of these methods has been proven, such as deep electrical stimulation and electrode implantation. according to the "brain-computer interface technology development and application research report (2023)" by the china academy of information and communications technology, as of the first quarter of 2023, there are more than 500 representative brain-computer interface companies in the world, distributed in more than 40 countries and regions.

duan feng, vice dean of the school of medicine at nankai university and professor of the school of artificial intelligence, believes that "although this technology is feasible in theory, it still has a long way to go in clinical application. in addition to being expensive, this invasive visual stimulation method has a certain risk of infection, which also brings certain difficulties to the application of this technology."

xu bin also said that from a clinical perspective, the brain itself is an immune special zone because there are no immune cells inside it. once an infection enters, it may cause encephalitis ormeningitisif the device is inserted, it may also damage small blood vessels and cause bleeding. there are also risks such as long-term biocompatibility and displacement after impact, which are the key points that need to be paid attention to in the future.