Global race

The main challenge now is to create smaller, wireless, and more convenient gear for patients to wear. Once the technology matures and is commercialized, it could spawn not only a series of medical wonders, but also open up novel communication channels for people, as well as new forms of entertainment beyond our wildest dreams, such as Metaverse.

Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co expects bio-machine interfaces to generate $70 billion to $200 billion annually in the next 10 to 20 years.

The US and the European Union have made hefty investments, both financial and in terms of resources, in BCI research, with launches of the BRAIN Initiative and the Human Brain Project, respectively.

International technology frontrunners are also jumping on the bandwagon. In 2016, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk co-founded San Francisco-based Neuralink Corp, which aims to design a "fully implantable, cosmetically invisible" BCI to enable people to control a computer or mobile device wherever they may be, according to the company's website.

In November this year, the entrepreneur showed a video of a monkey, with an implanted brain chip, typing out words on a screen using only his mind. Musk said the startup should be ready to test its technology on humans in six months.

China is also catching up fast in this area, and announced the launch of the China Brain Project, or Brain Science and Brain-Like Intelligence Technology, in 2016, with BCI playing an essential role.

The Shanghai municipal government recently unveiled a plan to encourage the development of BCI technology and build an industry cluster in the city. And Tianjin University has unveiled a software system called MetaBCI - the nation's first open-source software platform for BCI research.

Major universities in the HKSAR too have begun research on neuroscience at the Gerald Choa Neuroscience Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as well as the Department of Neuroscience established in 2019 by the City University of Hong Kong, and the Neural Interface Research Laboratory at its Department of Electrical Engineering.

"Medical students, particularly, are more interested in neuroscience. It's amazing that medical students at both the University of Hong Kong and the CUHK have decided to set up a joint Hong Kong students association on neuroscience, trying to engage young people in neuroscience," says Vincent Cheung Chi-kwan, associate professor of the School of Biomedical Sciences at the CUHK.

Cheung's research is to understand how the brain and the spinal cord control a person's movements. "Every human body has more than 600 muscles, and coordinating them for different movements is very difficult from the engineering perspective," he explains.

"Our approach is like the alphabet in English. We can use these 26 letters to create an infinite number of English words. Our idea is that the brain has an alphabet of movement. All we need is to find the right ones and create the right combinations when learning a new movement."

Cheung has applied the method to rehabilitate chronic stroke survivors. If walking originally requests letters x, y, and z, and a person can only walk with difficulty when "x" is missing, his strategy is to supply the expected letter, so that the person can at least train with the right alphabet combinations, and with the hope that stimulation can teach the nervous system to relearn the original combinations of the alphabet.

"We've finished treating the first batch of patients, and they really feel it's promising and are excited," says Cheung. His team is exploring the possibility of commercializing the technology, but he says details cannot be disclosed at this stage. The professor suggested that Hong Kong should create an environment where failures can be accepted and taking risks is encouraged, instead of focusing too much on the results.