VARIABILITI

Boosted by recBoosted by recent advances in neuroscience, AI and wearable sensors, neurotechnologies, and in particular brain–computer interfaces (BCIs), are increasingly presented as near-future solutions to restore, replace or even enhance movement, communication and cognition. They are envisioned, for example, to support motor rehabilitation after stroke, enable control of assistive technologies, or offer new forms of cognitive enhancement and interaction in virtual environments. Yet, in reality, BCIs remain insufficiently usable and reliable to be adopted in everyday life. Their performance is inconsistent and highly dependent on the individual user, creating a risk of disillusionment, funding loss and stalled innovation if expectations are not met. VARIABILITI addresses this challenge by training 14 DCs with R-COP (responsible, collaborative, open and participatory) principles, placing end-users at the core of the research and innovation (R&I) loop. By moving from a technology-centred to a human-centred approach, VARIABILITI’s overarching ambition is to make BCIs truly usable, acceptable and efficient. The international, interdisciplinary and intersectoral consortium (12 beneficiaries, 18 associated partners including clinicians, SMEs/industrials, and European networks) tackles this through four interconnected objectives: Initiate a paradigm shift toward sustainable, user-centred and responsible R&I in BCI; Model human learning and its variability to enable co-adaptive, personalised BCIs; Design & validate novel BCI protocols and algorithms to enhance the double learning process; Demonstrate the relevance and applicability of the VARIABILITI approach in both clinical and non-clinical real-world contexts. By providing open datasets, models, protocols and prototypes, the network will benefit BCI developers, end-users and decision-makers, strengthen Europe’s innovation capacity and support the emergence of responsible, inclusive and high-impact neurotechnologies.