A research team from the Institute of Automation at the Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered through primate experiments that the brain requires only a small number of neurons to decode three-dimensional hand movement trajectories. The study reveals that both the primary motor cortex and the premotor cortex need just a limited number of position-tuned cells to accomplish 3D trajectory decoding, confirming the brain's remarkable encoding efficiency. According to the researchers, the deeper our understanding of the brain, the better brain-computer interfaces will perform. In the future, if brain-computer interfaces can directly extract movement trajectories from brain activity, they will not only execute action plans more efficiently but also enable smoother control of external devices. The findings were recently published in The Journal of Neuroscience, an international academic journal.