BCI - a timeline for context 

In recent years BCI is 'on people's minds' or at least on the radar of society's zeitgeist.  Therefore you will be forgiven if you think this is a 'brand new' technology, surprisingly it is not.  What is new is the speed of advancement bringing the model theories and early past attempts into a much more feasible, scalable real world application.  For example new materials, in the case of Neuralink tiny wires replacing arrays, decreasing the imposition on the brain tissue and massively increasing bandwidth along with modern robotic surgeons achieving precise surgery that humans cannot.  Or in the case of Synchron Neuralink's main competitor applying older stent technology to access the brain without 'invasive' surgery.

• Invasive: "pioneering studies conducted by Fetz and colleagues in the 1960s and 1970s" (Lebedev & Nicolelis, 2006) 

• Non invasive: "Original attempts to provide subjects with feedback signals derived from their own brain activity were made in the 1960s and 1970s." (Lebedev & Nicolelis, 2006) 

• Military & government involvement starts: “DARPA’s initial investments in BCI began in 1974 under the Close-Coupled Man/Machine Systems (later renamed Biocybernetics) program.” Pg.54 (Miranda et al., 2015)

• "In 1998 Philip Kennedy implanted the first invasive BCI into human" (Kawala-Sterniuk et al., 2021) 

• "The 2000s brought a highly increased number of studies and papers about the BCI systems" (Kawala-Sterniuk et al., 2021) 

• Breakthrough surgeries and studies continued with implanted arrays giving patients with various spinal cord injuries to regain sensations and control robotic prosthetics.  Bear in mind, these early attempts also faced majors challenges such as bandwidth and rejection.

• 2024 Neuralink implants higher bandwidth device allowing quadriplegic trial patient to "move a cursor on a computer screen to allow him to control music and play games such as chess" and Mario cart.  (Neuralink 2024) 

IF you'd like to go further:

The following video not only gives an interesting timeline of optical BCI implants, but tells us where we are, what is possible and where we can go from here.  It also raises other interesting questions such as "what if the company who installed your implant goes out of business?". Scary yes, but this actually happened!  I will not ask you to watch this video to get through the OER as it is 23 minutes long, however if this interests you, I highly recommend it.

(Chua, 2024) 

IF like I was, you are unclear on what exists right now and what is still theoretical and this topic interests you, I recommend diving into this 17 minute video outlining BCI applications.  I found it to be one of the better videos I came across.

(Canning, 2021)