Back

Adaptive Neural Reorganization Enables Real-Time Finger-Level Robotic Control in BCI-Naïve Stroke Survivors

Ding, Y.; Karrenbach, M.; Johnson, Z.; Wang, H.; Zhang, J.; Wittenberg, G. F.; He, B.

2026-06-18 neuroscience
10.64898/2026.06.15.732267 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Restoring hand function remains a major challenge for individuals with motor impairments following stroke. Noninvasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) aim to address this problem by translating neural signals into robotic assistance; however, control of individual fingers has not been demonstrated in BCI-naive populations. In this study, we investigated whether individuals with stroke and no prior BCI experience could achieve finger-level robotic control using motor imagery. Nine stroke-affected participants performed real-time BCI tasks to control a robotic hand through imagined finger movements decoded from electroencephalography. On average, participants achieved decoding accuracies of 84% for two-finger tasks and 61% for three-finger tasks, demonstrating reliable control at the level of individual fingers. These results indicate that discriminable neural signals for fine motor control persist after stroke and can be leveraged using data-driven deep learning decoders. Sensor-level and source-level electrophysiological analyses further reveal patterns of stroke-related neural reorganization. Overall, these findings support the potential of noninvasive, finger-level BCIs for post-stroke robotic assistance.

Matching journals

The top 9 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.