Ultrasound, No Surgery: A New Brain Interface Aims to Wake Patients in Comas

October 30 — According to CCTV News, Shenzhen in Guangdong is hosting the Greater Bay Area International Brain-Computer Interface Industry Innovation Conference, alongside the country’s first Guangming Brain Science and Technology Week. At the event, a new generation of non-invasive ultrasound brain-computer interface technology developed by teams including the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was unveiled.

It overturns the usual idea of what a brain-computer interface is: no opening the skull, no implanted electrodes — it talks to the brain with ultrasound. On that basis, three 20-minute sessions a week for four weeks may rouse patients with chronic disorders of consciousness — the people usually described as being in a vegetative state.

The report notes that the value of brain-computer interfaces goes far beyond “controlling things outside”; repairing neural function from within is the more imaginative direction. The technology can write precise regulatory signals into the brain, potentially activating the brain’s own neuroplasticity and rebuilding damaged or dormant neural pathways.

The domestically developed non-invasive ultrasound interface has already been used in intervention studies for conditions such as epilepsy and depression.

In a preliminary clinical study with Kunming Medical University, 13 of 24 participants with chronic disorders of consciousness showed clear improvement in conscious behaviour. One patient who had been in a coma for three months after a brain haemorrhage was successfully roused after 30 days of ultrasound treatment; after recovery the patient could hold conversations, eat unaided and walk with assistance.

The technology can also be “customised” to different brain conditions.

Epilepsy is uncontrolled, high-frequency abnormal firing of neurons in a local brain region — like a circuit shorting continuously — and ultrasound is used to suppress that over-excitation.

Depression is an imbalance in the brain’s emotion-regulating circuits, and ultrasound can modulate the abnormal emotional loop.

A vegetative state involves damage to the communication links between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex, leaving the whole consciousness network silent. Repeated, gentle rounds of ultrasound can promote the rebuilding of network function, letting dormant, disconnected networks slowly resume communicating — helping the brain regain control of the body, and consciousness to “wake” a little at a time.

Brain-computer interfaces commonly fall into three routes — invasive, semi-invasive and non-invasive — and the new non-invasive ultrasound technology is an entirely new path within the non-invasive direction.