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CyberKinetics Neurotechnology Systems (CNS) is a medical device company with technology to treat nervous system disorders. CNS was originally called Cyberkinetics when it was established in 2002 as a Brown University spin-off/startup. The company’s first product, BrainGate, is a brain-computer interface designed to give severely paralyzed individuals communication and control of a computer. CNS was co-founded by neuroscientist John Donaghue. One of the company’s main goals was to create software products to improve the quality of life of severely motor-impaired people.
Dr. Donoghue and the CNS board sold off CNS and its intellectual property assets, patent portfolio, BrainGate trademark and domain name for almost one million dollars in 2009. The assets were bought by Mr. Jeff Stible who established the company BrainGate, which has exclusive rights to key patents surrounding neural interfaces and their use to control computers, prosthesis and other devices. The focus of the BrainGate company is to improve the software that needs to understand the language of neurons and transfer that to the computer. Donaghue is working on a second generation system called BrainGate2. Cyberkinetics spun off its device manufacturing to new ownership by Blackrock Microsystems in 2008. Research on BrainGate2 is conducted by researchers at academic institutions that form the BrainGate Research Team with funding from federal and philanthropic sources.
