Researchers have developed a paper-thin brain implant called BISC that creates a high-bandwidth wireless link between the brain and computers. The single-chip device, which can slide into the narrow space between the brain and skull, could open new possibilities for treating conditions such as epilepsy, paralysis, and blindness by supporting advanced AI models that decode movement, perception, and intent.
A collaboration between Columbia University, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania has produced the Biological Interface System to Cortex (BISC), an ultra-thin brain-computer interface described by Columbia Engineering and reported by ScienceDaily. The system, detailed in a study published December 8 in the journal Nature Electronics, includes a minimally invasive implant, a wearable relay station, and a supporting software environment.
BISC’s implant is built around a single complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit that has been thinned to 50 micrometers and occupies less than 1/1000th the volume of a standard implant, with a total volume of about 3 cubic millimeters. According to Columbia University, the micro‑electrocorticography device incorporates 65,536 electrodes, 1,024 simultaneous recording channels, and 16,384 stimulation channels, and is flexible enough to curve to the surface of the brain.
Unlike many existing medical-grade brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that rely on a large implanted canister housing multiple electronic components with wires running to the brain, BISC integrates all necessary elements directly on a single chip. The implant includes a radio transceiver, wireless power circuitry, digital control electronics, power management, data converters, and the analog components needed for both recording and stimulation.
“Our implant is a single integrated circuit chip that is so thin that it can slide into the space between the brain and the skull, resting on the brain like a piece of wet tissue paper,” said Ken Shepard, the Lau Family Professor of Electrical Engineering at Columbia University and a senior author who led the engineering work.
An external, battery-powered relay station worn by the user supplies power to the implant and communicates with it through a custom ultrawideband radio link that reaches data throughputs of about 100 megabits per second. Columbia’s team notes that this is at least 100 times higher than the throughput of other wireless BCIs currently available. The relay station appears externally as an 802.11 Wi-Fi device, effectively bridging the implant to standard computers.
The chip was fabricated using TSMC’s 0.13-micrometer Bipolar‑CMOS‑DMOS (BCD) technology, which combines digital logic, high-voltage and high-current analog functions, and power devices on the same die—an approach the researchers say is essential to BISC’s compact, mixed-signal design.
BISC also introduces its own instruction set and software stack, forming a dedicated computing environment for brain interfaces. The high-bandwidth recordings demonstrated in the study enable the use of advanced machine-learning and deep-learning algorithms to interpret complex brain activity related to intentions, perceptual experiences, and internal brain states.
“This high-resolution, high-data-throughput device has the potential to revolutionize the management of neurological conditions from epilepsy to paralysis,” said Dr. Brett Youngerman, an assistant professor of neurological surgery at Columbia University and neurosurgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who served as the project’s main clinical collaborator. Youngerman and colleagues recently secured a National Institutes of Health grant to explore the use of BISC for drug-resistant epilepsy.
Extensive preclinical work in motor and visual cortices, conducted with co-senior author Andreas S. Tolias at Stanford’s Byers Eye Institute and Bijan Pesaran at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that the implant can provide stable, high-quality recordings. Short-term intraoperative studies in human patients are already under way, in which surgeons insert the paper-thin device through a small opening in the skull and slide it onto the brain’s surface in the subdural space.
“BISC turns the cortical surface into an effective portal, delivering high-bandwidth, minimally invasive read-write communication with AI and external devices,” said Tolias, who has long worked on training AI systems using large-scale neural recordings, including those gathered with BISC.
According to Columbia Engineering, the BISC platform was developed under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Neural Engineering System Design program and draws on Columbia’s expertise in microelectronics, the neuroscience programs at Stanford and Penn, and the surgical capabilities at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
To move the technology toward broader research and eventual clinical use, members of the Columbia and Stanford teams have co-founded Kampto Neurotech, a startup led by Columbia electrical engineering alumnus and project engineer Nanyu Zeng. The company is producing research-ready versions of the chip and working to secure additional funding to prepare the system for use in human patients.
By pairing ultra-high-resolution, fully wireless neural recording with sophisticated decoding algorithms, the researchers argue that BISC offers a path toward smaller, safer, and more powerful neural interfaces that could enhance treatments for neurological disorders and, over time, enable more seamless interaction between the brain and AI-driven devices.
