WeChat Public Account:BrainQuake
Revealing human brain information coding and developing the next-generation brain-computer interface (BCI) — Professor Bo Hong is a Tenured Professor at the School of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, and Dean of Xian College; he obtained his doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2001, and served as a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins University, USA in 2004 and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, USA in 2016. His main research direction is BCI and neural engineering: his team designed and developed the wireless minimally invasive BCI "NEO", which successfully conducted the first clinical trial on a paraplegic patient in October 2023 and launched the world's first multi-center registered clinical trial for implanted BCI in June 2025; the team has made progress in deciphering the mechanisms of human brain speech and language processing and the dynamic characteristics of brain networks, with achievements published in Nature Communications, Nature Neuroscience, PNAS and other journals. Lab homepage:http://neuro.med.tsinghua.edu.cn/
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Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) enables direct communication between the brain and computers by recording and decoding neural signals. It not only aids rehabilitation for patients with brain disorders such as spinal cord injury, stroke, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and epilepsy but also holds promise for disruptive technologies like direct brain-computer communication and brain-computer integrated intelligence, expanding human information processing capabilities.
After ten years of intensive research led by Professor Hong Bo, the team developed the wireless minimally invasive BCI "NEO", addressing key limitations of mainstream implanted BCIs (e.g., Neuralink, BrainGate) such as high invasiveness and unstable long-term signals. NEO’s electrodes are placed epidurally without damaging neural tissue, achieving minimally invasive implantation. A coin-sized processor is embedded in the patient’s skull to capture neural signals from motor brain regions; battery-free, it receives power via near-field coupling between an internal coil (under the scalp) and an external device, enabling high-bandwidth bidirectional wireless signal transmission. A neural decoding algorithm integrating spatiotemporal-frequency information allows quadriplegic patients to control drinking, cursors, and wheelchairs via brain signals.
The first clinical trial was successfully conducted at Xuanwu Hospital in October 2023, followed by the second and third at Tiantan Hospital and Huashan Hospital, respectively, verifying the BCI’s long-term safe implantation and home use in humans. In June 2025, multicenter registered clinical trials launched across 12 hospitals nationwide, listed by Nature as one of the notable scientific events of 2025.
Language, a unique cognitive function of the human brain, is key to revealing the nature of intelligence. Professor Hong Bo’s team combined intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) and whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to uncover how auditory, linguistic, and motor brain regions collaborate through precise spatiotemporal coordination to enable neural mechanisms of speech tone recognition.
Beyond the traditional auditory processing pathway, the team identified the role of motor-related brain regions in tone processing. They further developed methods to characterize fine-grained information transmission and speech processing selectivity, discovering that the temporal and frontal lobes form a specialized network for processing speech-specific information—analogous to the classic face-processing pathway in vision. Through high-resolution spatiotemporal joint analysis of iEEG and fMRI, they revealed a critical mechanism: the temporal auditory cortex processes speech fundamental frequency via precise temporal tracking.
These three breakthroughs transcend the traditional hierarchical information processing framework, establishing a network synergy theory for human speech information processing.
1. Liu D, Shan Y, Wei P, Li W, Xu H, Liang F, Liu T, Zhao G*, Hong B*. Reclaiming Hand Functions after Complete Spinal Cord Injury with Epidural Brain-Computer Interface. medRxiv 2024.09.05.24313041; doi:10.1101/2024.09.05.24313041
2. Liu D, Xu X, Li D, Li J, Yu X, Ling Z, Hong B*. Intracranial brain-computer interface spelling using localized visual motion response. Neuroimage. 2022 Sep; 258:119363. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119363.
3. Liu Z, Tang J, Gao B, Yao P, Li X, Liu D, Zhou Y, Qian H, Hong B*, Wu H*. Neural signal analysis with memristor arrays towards high-efficiency brain-machine interfaces. Nature Communications. 2020 Aug;11(1):4234. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-18105-4.
4. Zhang Y, Ding Y, Huang J, Zhou W, Ling Z, Hong B*, Wang X*. Hierarchical cortical networks of "voice patches" for processing voices in human brain. PNAS. 2021 Dec; 118(52):e2113887118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2113887118.
5. Guo N, Si X, Zhang Y, Ding Y, Zhou W, Zhang D, Hong B*. Speech frequency-following response in human auditory cortex is more than a simple tracking. Neuroimage. 2021 Feb;226:117545. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117545.
6. Yan Y, Dahmani L, Ren J, Shen L, Peng X, Wang R, He C, Jiang C, Gong C, Tian Y, Zhang J, Guo Y, Lin Y, Li S, Wang M, Li L, Hong B*, Liu H*. Reconstructing lost BOLD signal in individual participants using deep machine learning. Nature Communications. 2020 Oct 7;11(1):5046. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-18823-9.
7. Si X, Zhou W, Hong B*. Cooperative cortical network for categorical processing of Chinese lexical tone. PNAS. 2017 Nov; 114(46):12303-12308. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1710752114.
8. Wang D, Buckner RL, Fox MD, Holt DJ, Holmes AJ, Stoecklein S, Langs G, Pan R, Qian T, Li K, Baker JT, Stufflebean SM, Wang K, Wang X, Hong B*, Liu H*. Parcellating cortical functional networks in individuals. Nature neuroscience, 18(12), 1853–1860. 2015
Biochip Technology (Harwood Academic Publishers, USA, 2001)
Capillary Electrophoresis of Nucleic Acids (Humana Press, USA, 2001)
Biochip Technology (Tsinghua University Press, China, 2004)
Laser Fingerprinting (Tsinghua University Press, China, 2005)
The Frontiers of Biochip Technology I (Kluwer Academic Publishers, USA, 2005)
The Frontiers of Biochip Technology II (Kluwer Academic Publishers, USA, 2005)
Laboratory Manual of Biochip Technology (Tsinghua University Press, China, 2006)
Biochips: The CPU of Life Information (China Children's Press, China, 2006)
Academic Honors
Beijing Nova of Science and Technology
New Century Excellent Talents in University under the Ministry of Education
