What is the MoveAgain platform and why is it significant?

MoveAgain is Blackrock Neurotech's commercial brain-computer interface platform designed to restore movement for people with paralysis. It's powered by the Utah Array, the only FDA-approved implantable BCI device on the market. The system enables patients with spinal cord injuries and other motor impairments to control cursors, communicate, and interact with devices using neural signals recorded directly from their motor cortex.

How did self-supervised learning improve the neural decoder performance?

Traditional supervised learning requires extensive labeled data from each session, creating a cold-start problem where patients must complete lengthy calibration procedures. Self-supervised pre-training learns general representations of neural activity patterns across subjects and sessions before fine-tuning on specific tasks. This approach yielded robust cross-session decoding because the model had already learned what neural signals 'look like' in general, making it faster and more accurate when adapting to a specific patient or session.

What types of issues did the in-session analysis tools detect?

The in-session tools identified several categories of problems that could compromise session data: environmental electrical noise that corrupts neural recordings, errors in experimental setup or hardware configuration, unexpected task-locked neural responses that indicate protocol issues, and signal quality degradation over the course of a session. By catching these issues in real time, clinical teams could make adjustments immediately rather than losing entire session recordings.

How did AE Studio ensure HIPAA compliance and data security for clinical neural data?

Clinical neurotechnology involves highly sensitive patient data requiring strict privacy protections. AE Studio implemented secure data pipelines that maintained HIPAA compliance throughout the analysis workflow. This included encrypted data transfer and storage, access controls limiting data visibility to authorized team members, and audit trails documenting data handling. The automated analytics platform was designed with clinical data confidentiality as a core requirement.

Why was Rust used for the production implementation instead of Python?

The research and algorithm development work was done in Python, which offers flexibility and access to machine learning libraries. However, the production MoveAgain platform runs on embedded systems where performance, memory safety, and reliability are critical. Rust provides memory safety without garbage collection, predictable performance characteristics, and the low-level control needed for real-time BCI applications. AE Studio's team bridged both domains, translating research findings into production Rust code.

What is the Neural Data Transformer (NDT) and how was it optimized?

The Neural Data Transformer is a deep learning architecture designed for neural signal decoding. It processes time-series neural data to predict intended movements or actions. AE Studio optimized the NDT through systematic hyperparameter tuning for both pre-training and fine-tuning phases, investigated alternative self-supervised learning approaches like contrastive learning, and developed model stabilization methods to improve robustness across sessions and reduce training time.

How does this work relate to AE Studio's broader BCI expertise?

The Blackrock collaboration is part of AE Studio's extensive neurotechnology portfolio. The team has won first place in every category of the Neural Latents Benchmark Challenge, contributed to open-source tools like the Neurotech Development Kit and Neural Data Simulator, and works with multiple BCI companies including Forest Neurotech and clinical partners. AE Studio's models achieved top rankings in international neural decoding competitions, demonstrating technical leadership in translating brain signals into actionable outputs.

What was the typical development timeline for the different project components?

The project spanned multiple statements of work with varying timelines by component. Decoder development tasks like model pre-training and hyperparameter tuning took 4-7 weeks each. Research session support required approximately 1.5 weeks per session for signal analysis, decoding analysis, and model release. The automated multi-session analysis platform required 8-11 weeks for centralized storage, automated analysis, and dashboard visualization. In-session tool development and MoveAgain software integration were ongoing efforts.

Blackrock Neurotech MoveAgain BCI: Neural Decoder Optimization

TL;DR

Demonstrated superior decoding performance using self-supervised learning approaches, improving cross-session robustness and reducing retraining time for paralysis patients

Built real-time in-session analysis tools that identify experimental issues immediately, preventing loss of entire session recordings and enabling rapid clinical iteration

Developed automated multi-session analytics platform with centralized data storage, automated analysis pipelines, and cross-session dashboard visualization for clinical decision support

The Challenge

Brain-computer interfaces face a fundamental engineering challenge: neural signals drift over time. What worked in yesterday's session may not work today. Patients with paralysis using BCIs need systems that adapt quickly and maintain accuracy across sessions without lengthy recalibration.

AE Studio partnered with Blackrock Neurotech, creator of the Utah Array, the only FDA-approved implanted BCI device, to advance their MoveAgain platform. MoveAgain enables patients with paralysis to control cursors and devices using their thoughts, but the neural decoders powering the system required optimization for real-world clinical use.

The technical challenges were significant: improving decoder accuracy for cursor movement and click classification, reducing the time required to retrain models between sessions, and building tools that clinical teams could use to analyze sessions without specialized data science support.

Key Results

First FDA-approved implantable BCI platform supported

Superior cross-session decoder performance demonstrated

Reduced retraining time between sessions

Real-time in-session issue detection

The Solution

Self-Supervised Learning for Cross-Session Robustness

The breakthrough came from applying self-supervised learning techniques to neural decoder training. Traditional supervised approaches required extensive labeled data from each session, creating a cold-start problem every time a patient began a new session.

AE Studio demonstrated that self-supervised pre-training across subjects and sessions yielded robust cross-session decoding with improved accuracy. By learning general representations of neural activity patterns before fine-tuning on specific tasks, the decoder could generalize across the natural variability in brain signals, reducing the burden on patients and clinicians while maintaining high performance.

Neural Data Transformer Architecture Optimization

We optimized the Neural Data Transformer (NDT) architecture for the MoveAgain platform. This included systematic hyperparameter tuning for both fine-tuning and pre-training phases, ensuring parameters transferred reliably across runs, sessions, tasks, and subjects.

We also investigated contrastive learning approaches to determine if they could provide additional improvements to performance or robustness compared to existing NDT implementations. Model stabilization methods were developed to minimize retraining time in new sessions while maintaining decoder accuracy.

Real-Time In-Session Analysis Tools

Clinical BCI sessions are expensive and time-constrained. Losing an entire recording due to an undetected hardware issue or environmental noise is costly. We built in-session analysis tools capable of identifying experimental problems in real time.

The tool detected issues including environmental noise, errors in experimental or hardware setup, and unexpected task-locked neural responses, allowing clinical teams to fix problems immediately rather than discovering them during post-session analysis. This transformed session efficiency and data quality.

Automated Multi-Session Analytics Platform

As Blackrock scaled to multiple participants with up to two sessions per month each, manual analysis became unsustainable. We built an automated analytics system that ingested data from MoveAgain sessions, computed relevant metrics, and stored results in a structured database.

The platform provided high-level dashboards for cross-session performance tracking alongside detailed reports for within-session analysis. This reduced time between data acquisition and actionable insights, freeing clinical researchers to focus on interpretation rather than data processing.

Centralized and automated storage of data, analysis, and trained models across all participants and sessions
Automated signal quality analysis including temporal and spectral noise characterization and artifact detection
Behavioral data quantification with velocity and trajectory profiling for cursor control tasks
Cross-session performance dashboards enabling rapid comparison of decoder accuracy across the participant's measurement history

Production Integration with Rust Development

Research findings needed to translate into the production MoveAgain platform. AE Studio's Rust developers extended the MoveAgain codebase to support self-supervised and pre-trained models, including adding a linear decoder and updating the NDT architecture.

This enabled closed-loop calibration improvements and brought research-demonstrated performance gains into the hands of patients. We also supported documentation and requirements generation for FDA compliance, leveraging our experience with both the research Python codebase and production Rust implementation.

Results

Key Metrics

First FDA-approved implantable BCI platform supported

Superior cross-session decoder performance demonstrated

Reduced retraining time between sessions

Real-time in-session issue detection

Automated multi-session analytics platform

20+ concurrent behavioral detectors supported

Support for 2 participants with bi-monthly sessions

Python to Rust production implementation

HIPAA-compliant data handling

The Full Story

AE Studio's collaboration with Blackrock Neurotech advanced the MoveAgain BCI platform toward broader clinical deployment. Our work demonstrated superior decoding performance within and across sessions using self-supervised training approaches.

Key outcomes from the engagement:

Improved real-time accuracy of neural decoding algorithms through systematic hyperparameter optimization and architecture improvements.

Reduced decoder retraining time between sessions through pre-trained model approaches, improving the patient experience during clinical use.

Automated post-session analysis that previously required hours of manual data science work, enabling clinical teams to understand session outcomes immediately.

In-session tools that saved entire recordings by catching hardware and environmental issues in real time.

Production Rust implementation of research findings, bridging the gap between algorithm development and clinical deployment.

The collaboration established AE Studio as a trusted partner through rigorous data handling, transparent collaboration, and contributions that extended the capabilities of the only FDA-approved implanted BCI to support future clinical applications.

Conclusion

AE Studio's partnership with Blackrock Neurotech demonstrates how applied machine learning and production software engineering can advance clinical brain-computer interfaces. By combining self-supervised learning techniques, real-time analysis tools, and automated analytics platforms, we helped extend the capabilities of the MoveAgain platform, bringing improved decoder performance and clinical usability to patients with paralysis. This collaboration exemplifies AE Studio's mission: applying cutting-edge AI and software development to neurotechnology that genuinely improves human lives.

Key Insights

Self-supervised pre-training improves BCI decoder robustness. By learning general neural activity representations before task-specific fine-tuning, models generalize better across sessions and reduce patient burden during calibration.

Real-time session monitoring prevents data loss. In-session tools that detect hardware issues, environmental noise, and setup errors immediately save costly clinical recordings that would otherwise be lost to post-hoc discovery.

Automated analytics scale clinical BCI research. As participant numbers grow, manual analysis becomes a bottleneck. Centralized data pipelines with automated quality metrics and cross-session dashboards enable faster clinical iteration.

Research-to-production translation requires dual expertise. Optimizing algorithms in Python research environments is only half the challenge, production deployment in Rust for embedded systems requires teams that span both domains.

Clinical neurotechnology demands rigorous data handling. FDA compliance, HIPAA requirements, and patient privacy necessitate secure pipelines and transparent collaboration between research and clinical teams.

MoveAgain BCI Platform