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Recording the exercise of huge populations of single neurons within the mind over lengthy durations of time is essential to additional our understanding of neural circuits, to allow novel medical device-based therapies and, sooner or later, for brain-computer interfaces requiring high-resolution electrophysiological data.
However at this time there’s a tradeoff between how a lot high-resolution data an implanted gadget can measure and the way lengthy it could keep recording or stimulation performances. Inflexible, silicon implants with many sensors, can accumulate a whole lot of data however cannot keep within the physique for very lengthy. Versatile, smaller units are much less intrusive and might last more within the mind however solely present a fraction of the out there neural data.
Just lately, an interdisciplinary crew of researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson Faculty of Engineering and Utilized Sciences (SEAS), in collaboration with The College of Texas at Austin, MIT and Axoft, Inc., developed a mushy implantable gadget with dozens of sensors that may report single-neuron exercise within the mind stably for months.
The analysis was revealed in Nature Nanotechnology.
“We now have developed brain-electronics interfaces with single-cell decision which can be extra biologically compliant than conventional supplies,” mentioned Paul Le Floch, first creator of the paper and former graduate scholar within the lab of Jia Liu, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at SEAS. “This work has the potential to revolutionize the design of bioelectronics for neural recording and stimulation, and for brain-computer interfaces.”
Le Floch is presently the CEO of Axoft, Inc, an organization based in 2021 by Le Floch, Liu and Tianyang Ye, a former graduate scholar and postdoctoral fellow within the Park Group at Harvard. Harvard’s Workplace of Know-how Growth has protected the mental property related to this analysis and licensed the know-how to Axoft for additional growth.
To beat the tradeoff between high-resolution knowledge price and longevity, the researchers turned to a gaggle of supplies generally known as fluorinated elastomers. Fluorinated supplies, like Teflon, are resilient, steady in biofluids, have glorious long-term dielectic efficiency, and are suitable with normal microfabrication strategies.
The researchers built-in these fluorinated dielectric elastomers with stacks of soppy microelectrodes — 64 sensors in complete — to develop a long-lasting probe that’s 10,000 occasions softer than standard versatile probes made from supplies engineering plastics, resembling polyimide or parylene C.
The crew demonstrated the gadget in vivo, recording neural data from the mind and spinal cords of mice over the course of a number of months.
“Our analysis highlights that, by rigorously engineering varied elements, it’s possible to design novel elastomers for long-term-stable neural interfaces,” mentioned Liu, who’s the corresponding creator of the paper. “This examine may broaden the vary of design prospects for neural interfaces.”
The interdisciplinary analysis crew additionally included SEAS Professors Katia Bertoldi, Boris Kozinsky and Zhigang Suo.
“Designing new neural probes and interfaces is a really interdisciplinary drawback that requires experience in biology, electrical engineering, supplies science, mechanical and chemical engineering,” mentioned Le Floch.
The analysis was co-authored by Siyuan Zhao, Ren Liu, Nicola Molinari, Eder Medina, Hao Shen, Zheliang Wang, Junsoo Kim, Hao Sheng, Sebastian Partarrieu, Wenbo Wang, Chanan Sessler, Guogao Zhang, Hyunsu Park, Xian Gong, Andrew Spencer, Jongha Lee, Tianyang Ye, Xin Tang, Xiao Wang and Nanshu Lu.
The work was supported by the Nationwide Science Basis by means of the Harvard College Supplies Analysis Science and Engineering Heart Grant No. DMR-2011754.
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