Objective. Intracortical brain–computer interfaces (iBCI) have the potential to restore independence for individuals with significant motor or communication impairments. One of the most realistic avenues for clinical translation of iBCI technology is enabling control of a computer cursor—i.e. movement-related neural activity is interpreted (decoded) and used to drive cursor function. Here we aim to improve cursor click decoding to allow for both point-and-click and click-and-drag control. Approach. Using chronic microelectrode arrays implanted in the motor cortex of two participants with tetraplegia, we identified prominent neural responses related to attempted hand grasp. We then developed a new approach for decoding cursor click (hand grasp) based on the most salient responses. Main results. We found that the population-wide response contained three dominant components related to hand grasp: an onset transient response, a sustained response, and an offset transient response. The transient responses were larger in magnitude—and thus more reliably detected—than the sustained response, and a click decoder based on these transients outperformed the standard approach of binary state classification. Significance. A transient-based approach for identifying hand grasp can provide a high degree of cursor click control for both point-and-click and click-and-drag applications. This generalized click functionality is an important step toward high-performance cursor control and eventual clinical translation of iBCI technology.

客观的。皮质内脑机接口 (iBCI) 有可能恢复患有严重运动或交流障碍的个体的独立性。iBCI 技术临床翻译最现实的途径之一是实现对计算机光标的控制——即与运动相关的神经活动被解释（解码）并用于驱动光标功能。在这里，我们的目标是改进光标点击解码，以允许点击和点击和拖动控制。方法。使用植入两名四肢瘫痪参与者运动皮层的慢性微电极阵列，我们确定了与试图抓握有关的显着神经反应。然后，我们开发了一种基于最显着响应来解码光标点击（手抓）的新方法。主要结果。我们发现，整个人群的响应包含与手抓握相关的三个主要成分：起始瞬态响应、持续响应和偏移瞬态响应。与持续响应相比，瞬态响应的幅度更大，因此检测更可靠，基于这些瞬态的点击解码器优于二进制状态分类的标准方法。意义。用于识别手抓握的基于瞬态的方法可以为点击和点击和拖动应用程序提供高度的光标点击控制。这种通用的点击功能是迈向高性能光标控制和 iBCI 技术最终临床转化的重要一步。