Chinese BCI reportedly enables frontal lobe epilepsy patient to play Black Myth: Wukong with under 20 hours of training

Brain-computer Interface or BCI is a communication link between the human brain and a computer aimed at rehabilitating those who have lost motor function. Elon Musk’s Neuralink is an example of that, but it is not the only technology out there. According to a new report, a Chinese BCI has made a breakthrough in the clinical trial phase by enabling a patient to play large-scale complex games like Black Myth: Wukong.

The IT Home report (machine translated), states that Brain Tiger Technology, Tianqiao Brain Science Institute (TCCI), and a team of researchers from the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have made a breakthrough in BCI technology. The BCI, running XessOS brain-computer operating system developed by Brain Tiger Technology, was implanted in a 19-year-old patient with right frontal lobe epilepsy. After about 20 hours of training, it was observed that the patient was able to play large-scale complex games like Honor of Kings and Black Myth: Wukong.

It was noted that the patient achieved precise brain control operations as mapped in real time by the team through local field potential signals (LFP). The BCI in question is a 256-channel flexible brain-computer interface and it showed that the subject’s cursor brain control performance reached 4.07 bits/second (BPS) in less than 20 hours (19.87 hours). The report notes that Neuralink was able to achieve 4.6 BPS but after 60 hours of training. Notably, the latest claims from Neuralink state Noland Arbaugh, the first recipient of the implant, has been able to reach a rate of over nine BPS. The chip was implanted in January of 2024.

Further, the IT Home report states that the subject was in good condition throughout the trial and after, doctors used the BCI to locate the epileptic lesion and successfully performed lesion resection surgery, leaving the subject with no functional impairment post recovery. The team at Brain Tiger Technology hopes to carry out similar clinical trials this year.