Uploaded March 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Researchers at UC San Francisco have enabled a man who is paralyzed to control a robotic arm by imagining the movements he wants to make. The brain-computer interface, or BCI, worked for a record seven months without needing to be adjusted.
The BCI relies on an AI model that can adjust to the small changes that take place in the brain as a person repeats a movement – or in this case, an imagined movement.
Key to the breakthrough was discovering how activity shifted in the brain day-to-day as a study participant repeatedly imagined making specific movements. Once the AI was programmed to account for those shifts, it worked for months at a time.
Tiny sensors implanted on the surface of the patient's brain picked up brain activity when the study participant imagined moving. An AI model decoded the activity into movement that drove the robotic arm.
The participant could make the robotic arm pick up blocks, turn them and move them to new locations. He was even able to open a cabinet, take out a cup and hold it up to a water dispenser. For people with paralysis, the ability to feed themselves or get a drink of water would be life changing.
“I’m very confident that we’ve learned how to build the system now, and that we can make this work,” said lead researcher and UCSF neurologist Karunesh Ganguly, MD, PhD.
Learn more about the research https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2025/03/429561/how-paralyzed-man-moved-robotic-arm-his-thoughts
Read the paper published in Cell on 3/6/25:
cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00157-6
[Extended Audio Description: youtu.be/XIMA6_aX3Mg]
Researchers at UC San Francisco have enabled a man who is paralyzed to control a robotic arm by imagining the movements he wants to make. The brain-computer interface, or BCI, worked for a record seven months without needing to be adjusted.
The BCI relies on an AI model that can adjust to the small changes that take place in the brain as a person repeats a movement – or in this case, an imagined movement.
Key to the breakthrough was discovering how activity shifted in the brain day-to-day as a study participant repeatedly imagined making specific movements. Once the AI was programmed to account for those shifts, it worked for months at a time.
Tiny sensors implanted on the surface of the patient's brain picked up brain activity when the study participant imagined moving. An AI model decoded the activity into movement that drove the robotic arm.
The participant could make the robotic arm pick up blocks, turn them and move them to new locations. He was even able to open a cabinet, take out a cup and hold it up to a water dispenser. For people with paralysis, the ability to feed themselves or get a drink of water would be life changing.
“I’m very confident that we’ve learned how to build the system now, and that we can make this work,” said lead researcher and UCSF neurologist Karunesh Ganguly, MD, PhD.
Learn more about the research https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2025/03/429561/how-paralyzed-man-moved-robotic-arm-his-thoughts
Read the paper published in Cell on 3/6/25:
cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(25)00157-6
[Extended Audio Description: youtu.be/XIMA6_aX3Mg]
