Application and Research Progress of BCI in Post-Stroke Psychiatric Disorders: A Narrative Review

17 March 2026 : Review article

Zekai Hu

^{ABCDEF 1,2}, Jinyan Wang^{ABCDEF 1}, Kun Zhou

^{BCDF 3}, Sicong Ma^{BCDF 1}, Jun Hu^{AG 1*}

DOI: 10.12659/MSM.951399

Med Sci Monit 2026; 32:e951399

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Introduction Epidemiology and Clinical Characteristics of Post-Stroke Psychiatric Disorders Basic Principles and Types of Brain-Computer Interfaces Application of Brain-Computer Interface in Post-Stroke Depression Application of Brain-Computer Interface in Post-Stroke Cognitive Impairment and Anxiety Disorders Challenges and Future Directions in the Application of Brain-Computer Interface Technology Conclusions References

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Table 2 Summary of representative BCI studies on post-stroke psychiatric and cognitive applications.

Target disorder	BCI modality & paradigm	Technical features	Key findings	Study
Mental stress/anxiety	EEG (passive monitoring)	Deep learning (LSTM-RNN) for state classification	Achieved high accuracy in detecting stress states; demonstrated potential for breathing entrainment interventions	Sundaresan et al []⁵⁸
Depression & anxiety	EEG-based neurofeedback	Audio-visual entrainment	Significant reduction in depression (HAM-D) and anxiety scores in RCT; modulation of beta/theta rhythms	Pino []⁶¹
Cognitive impairment	P300-BCI (cognitive training)	Event-Related Potential (ERP) based training	RCT showed significant improvements in MoCA scores (attention, naming) compared to control group	Fateeva et al []⁶⁴
Attention deficits	BCI + fMRI (multimodal)	Resting-state functional connectivity analysis	BCI attention training induced rapid strengthening of functional connectivity in attention networks	Mayorova et al []⁶⁵
Anxiety states	EEG (closed-loop)	Affective BCI with real-time feedback	Successfully classified anxious states and provided objective feedback for self-regulation	Chen et al []⁷¹
BCI – brain computer interface; EEG – electroencephalography; LSTM – long short-term memory; RNN – recurrent neural networks; HAM-D – Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression; RCT – randomized clinical trials; MoCA – Montreal cognitive assessment test; fMRI – functional magnetic resonance imaging.

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