One day last October, sitting in the courtyard of his house in China’s Henan province, Dong Hui decided to see if he could hold a pen to write.
Dong, 39, had sustained spinal cord injuries in a car accident six years earlier that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Slowly but determinedly, he wrote his name, “Thank you,” and then the date. This was the result of an 11-month-long rehabilitation enabled by an implant in his brain. Before that process, Dong could move his arms slightly but wasn’t able to use his fingers.
“I couldn’t believe I was able to write again. I was so excited I even missed a stroke in my name,” he told MIT Technology Review on a video call.
In November 2024, Dong became one of the first people in China to be given an invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) through brain surgery. He had signed up for a clinical trial with the device’s developer one month after seeing on TV how a BCI had apparently enabled another paralyzed Chinese man to hold his granddaughter.
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