RJ Mackenzie in The Scientist:
Brain implants can provide important insights into the nervous system and even relieve the symptoms of brain diseases. But getting implants into a patient’s head is an operation fraught with risks of tissue damage and infection.
Some approaches use blood vessels to deliver implants to the fringes of the brain, but these cannot access deep-lying areas at the roots of some of the most stubborn brain disorders. To overcome this, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, led by bioengineer Deblina Sarkar, took up the challenge of designing an implant with minimal footprint and maximum efficacy. In a new paper, published in Nature Biotechnology, Sarkar and her colleagues unveiled a novel implant design approach which piggybacks subcellular electronic devices to circulating immune cells. 1 The team’s wireless electronic-cell hybrids, which are powered by light, are 10 micrometers in diameter, which is smaller than a single droplet of mist. The researchers found that these devices could migrate to areas of inflammation in the mouse brain and then stimulate brain tissue with micrometer-level precision. They called their hybrids the first in a new field of “circulatronic” devices.
More here.
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