Shelly Fan in Singularity Hub:
From restoring movement and speech in people with paralysis to fighting depression, brain implants have fundamentally changed lives. But inserting implants, however small or nimble, requires risky open-brain surgery. Pain, healing time, and potential infections aside, the risk limits the technology to only a handful of people.
Now, scientists at MIT Media Lab and collaborators hope to bring brain implants to the masses. They’ve created a tiny electronic chip powered by near-infrared light that can generate small electrical zaps. After linking with a type of immune cell to form bio-electronic hybrid chips, a single injection into the veins of mice shuttled the devices into their brains—no surgery required. It sounds like science fiction, but the injected chips easily navigated the brain’s delicate and elaborate vessels to zero in on an inflamed site, where the microchip reliably delivered electrical pulses on demand. The chips happily cohabitated with surrounding neurons without changing the cells’ health or behavior.
More here.
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