University researchers at KU Leuven in Belgium have shown that monkeys can navigate complex virtual environments using a brain-computer interface (BCI) setup, which remarkably involves relatively little user training.

As reported in New Scientist , three rhesus macaques were implanted with Utah array BCI devices containing 96 electrodes in each of three brain regions: the primary motor cortex and the dorsal and ventral premotor cortices.

While the primary motor cortex is involved in voluntary movement, a region of the brain Elon Musk’s Neuralink taps into through its various animal research models and recent human clinical trials , the premotor cortices are thought to be dedicated to planning, organizing, and initiating those movements.

Image courtesy Peter Janssen et al

The key innovation isn’t the hardware itself though, as Utah arrays are widely used in research when reading neuronal activity, but rather the method the study goes about decoding that information, and making it actionable in 3D…