# Progress on monitoring and measuring brain activities

**URL:** <https://forum.thousandbrains.org/t/progress-on-monitoring-and-measuring-brain-activities/1063>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [April 15, 2026, 4:10am UTC](https://forum.thousandbrains.org/t/progress-on-monitoring-and-measuring-brain-activities/1063 "2026-04-15T04:10:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![johnnynanjiang](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.thousandbrains.org/johnnynanjiang/32/1220_2.png) [@johnnynanjiang](https://forum.thousandbrains.org/u/johnnynanjiang)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2026, 4:10am UTC](https://forum.thousandbrains.org/t/progress-on-monitoring-and-measuring-brain-activities/1063/1 "2026-04-15T04:10:41Z")

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1. Paradromics

Just tumbled upon Paradromics [https://www.paradromics.com](https://www.paradromics.com) recently, and would like to share it with the community to get your thoughts around would it address some limitations mentioned in the book of “A Thousand Brains” about monitoring and measuring brain activities.

1. Also would like to see if other progresses or products are being made in this field.

2. FYI, below is a matrix generated by ChatGPT

## 🧩 Where Modern Neurotech Fits (2026 view)

| Method / Product | Spatial Precision | Temporal Precision | Scale (# neurons) | Invasiveness | Key Idea |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **fMRI** | Medium | ❌ Slow (~1s) | ✅ Whole brain | Non-invasive | Blood flow proxy |
| **EEG (e.g. Emotiv)** | ❌ Low | ✅ High | ✅ Whole brain | Non-invasive | Surface electrical |
| **Kernel (Flow)** | Medium | Medium | Medium | Non-invasive | Optical brain imaging |
| **Neuralink** | ✅ High | ✅ High | ⚠ Hundreds–thousands | Invasive | Flexible high-density electrodes |
| **Paradromics** | ✅ High | ✅ High | ⚠ ~1,000+ channels | Invasive | High-bandwidth neural decoding |
| **Blackrock Neurotech** | ✅ High | ✅ High | ⚠ Hundreds | Invasive | Utah array (clinical standard) |
| **Synchron** | Medium | High | Low–Medium | ⚠ Minimally invasive | Stent-based (via blood vessels) |
| **Precision Neuroscience** | Medium–High | High | Medium | ⚠ Surface implant | Thin cortical sheet |
| **Single-neuron lab recording** | ✅ Very high | ✅ Very high | ❌ Tiny | Invasive | Gold standard |

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**Author:** ![NeuroJoe](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.thousandbrains.org/neurojoe/32/1154_2.png) [@NeuroJoe](https://forum.thousandbrains.org/u/NeuroJoe)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2026, 1:16pm UTC](https://forum.thousandbrains.org/t/progress-on-monitoring-and-measuring-brain-activities/1063/2 "2026-04-15T13:16:15Z")

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Functional biocompatibility is one of the big problems that has yet to be solved by any BCI:

[#neuroscience #neurotechnology #braincomputerinterface #neuralengineering #bioengineering #functionalperformance | TK Kozai](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tkozai_neuroscience-neurotechnology-braincomputerinterface-activity-7447237491901902848-Uk2t?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAgLhP8BuIr434gDofUknAzQ79eyG1bIwbQ) .

One of Dr. Kozai’s review papers: [Recent advances in neural interfaces—Materials chemistry to clinical translation | MRS Bulletin | Cambridge Core](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-bulletin/article/abs/recent-advances-in-neural-interfacesmaterials-chemistry-to-clinical-translation/EDA40C00791A9F655E36A342242BC6D8)

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**Author:** ![nleadholm](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex034/user_avatar/forum.thousandbrains.org/nleadholm/32/48_2.png) [@nleadholm](https://forum.thousandbrains.org/u/nleadholm)\
**Post date:** [April 27, 2026, 12:08pm UTC](https://forum.thousandbrains.org/t/progress-on-monitoring-and-measuring-brain-activities/1063/3 "2026-04-27T12:08:34Z")

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Thanks @johnnynanjiang , looks interesting. It’s hard to get a sense of how high-fidelity the recording is. The ChatGPT table you included mentions “~1,000+ channels”, but [this page suggests there are 421 micro-electrodes](https://www.paradromics.com/product). Given the size of the device (it looks fairly big), it’s hard to know how precise the read-out from individual neurons will be. My guess is that it is sufficient for their purposes - i.e. a commercial product for people who otherwise can’t verbally communicate - but it’s hard to know whether it could be used to record from the 10-100k neurons in a column to observe distributed encoding as predicted by the TBT.

It’s still interesting to hear about developments in this space though, so thank you for sharing. If you’re curious about this topic, you might want to check out the work from [Alipasha Vaziri](https://www.rockefeller.edu/our-scientists/heads-of-laboratories/1132-alipasha-vaziri/). He’s been developing some really interesting optical techniques to address some of the limitations in the field.