China builds the world’s smallest wearable brain monitor with a cortex-wide view
Por Dannie Peng — South China Morning Post – News feed
Advertisement Science China Science China builds the world’s smallest wearable brain monitor with a cortex-wide view
The Airscope offers a window on the simultaneous activity of thousands of individual neurons in untethered lab animals
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Dannie Peng in Beijing Published: 12:00pm, 21 Oct 2026
Chinese scientists have developed what they say is the world’s smallest wearable mini brain monitor that can track the activity of thousands of neurons at the same time.
Weighing in at one gram (0.35 oz), the wireless “Airscope” is the lightest device of its kind and enables researchers to track a wider range of brain activity in untethered laboratory animals.
The device was jointly developed by scientists from Tsinghua University and the Chinese PLA Medical School, and detailed in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on Monday.
“This microscope will push optical brain-computer interfaces towards more precise neural detection,” said Dai Qionghai, the paper’s corresponding author from Tsinghua’s automation department.
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