From 1924 to 2026: A Century-Long Academic Genealogy of Brain-Computer Interfaces
Neuralink
Brain-Computer Interface System Developer
In January 2024, Neuralink completed its first human implantation, enabling a paraplegic patient to control a computer cursor using only their thoughts. In March 2026, NeuroXess, a spin-off from Tsinghua University, received approval from the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for market launch, marking the world’s first approved implanted brain-computer interface (BCI) medical device.
At present, almost everyone is discussing the same thing: The era of brain-computer interfaces has finally arrived.
As everyone pays attention to these milestone achievements, we would like to further understand:Where do these technologies originate? Who are the key figures behind them? What are their interconnections and evolutionary trajectories?
VCBeat’s Orange Fruit Bureau has long focused on how scientific achievements transition from the laboratory to clinical practice and industry. We have tracked countless cases of patent transfers, technology licensing, and scholar-led startups. Throughout this process, we have increasingly come to realize that understanding the future of a technology requires first understanding its origins. At the core of these origins are not individual papers or patents, but people—the transfer of knowledge across generations of scholars, the academic accumulation within laboratories, and the repeated crossings from academia to industry.
Brain-Computer Interfaces Are at a Critical Inflection Point, Transitioning from the Laboratory to Large-Scale Clinical Application. At this juncture, we aim to systematically organize and document this academic lineage, creating an evidence-based reference map that provides researchers, clinicians, industry practitioners, and students with a starting point for understanding “who is doing what and who has influenced whom.”
Today, we are releasing the “Global Panorama of Academic and Technological Evolution in Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI).” This is an academic genealogy map. By tracing lines of mentorship and technological development, we have connected BCI academic achievements scattered across the globe and spanning over a century.
From Hans Berger’s recording of the first human electroencephalogram (EEG) in 1924 to the concurrent clinical breakthroughs across multiple pathways in 2026, each key advancement has often been underpinned by a relay of mentorship—spanning mentors, laboratories, and generations of students. We trace the divergence and convergence of these research trajectories, the competition and collaboration among academic schools, and the diffusion chain through which academic achievements translate into enterprise innovation and clinical practice.
Ultimately, this atlas includes more than 140 core scholars, 58 enterprises, and 51 universities and research institutions, covering 17 core international schools of thought and over 10 academic clusters in China. The main text comprises eight chapters, supplemented by five structured appendices: a scholar index, an enterprise index, an institution index, a key paper index, and a glossary.
When we connect these nodes, we will see something that has never appeared in any industry reports.
Neuralink is not just a company; it is a blender of academic DNA.It recruited core talent from at least five academic schools, including UCB, UCSF, Duke, MIT, and Stanford, to integrate them into a product prototype. Subsequently, as key figures departed, these academic genes underwent further fission—giving rise to competing ventures such as Science Corporation and Precision Neuroscience, which have collectively raised approximately $640 million. This "convergence → fission" model is extremely rare in the history of BCI industrialization.
China's BCI landscape features a multi-point blossoming pattern.We have found that China’s academic strength in brain-computer interfaces (BCI) is distributed across at least a dozen identifiable academic clusters—including Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Tianjin University, the six major sub-groups of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, South China University of Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Xi’an Jiaotong University, and the Beijing Institute for Brain Disorders. Each cluster possesses its own unique technological direction and industrial extensions. Of even greater note, at least 30 Chinese scholars have directly participated in founding BCI companies, a density that is striking.
Hospitals are not merely "users" of technology; they are themselves a source of academic innovation.We have mapped out the neurosurgical mentorship network originating from Beijing Tiantan Hospital, where academicians such as Zhao Jizong and Luan Guoming, trained under Academician Wang Zhongcheng, have respectively established the Tiantan BCI clinical translation platform and the Sanbo Brain Care system. Together with Zhao Guoguang from Xuanwu Hospital and Mao Ying from Huashan Hospital, China’s clinical capacity for brain-computer interfaces (BCI) is transitioning from “borrowing operating rooms” to “building independent academic schools.”
This atlas is accessible to everyone as a shared Feishu document. If you identify any errors or omissions, or wish to contribute additional information, you are welcome to leave comments directly within the document (the comment and review features have been enabled), or contact the editorial team of Dongmai Chengguo Bureau.
Through this roadmap, we see that every clinical breakthrough is not merely the flash of inspiration from a lone genius, but rather the cumulative result of intergenerational academic training, institutional platforms, and industrial integration. Only by understanding our past can we clearly envision the future. We hope this roadmap proves helpful to all.
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