Brain Implant
- Tasnia Ahmed
- Dec 24, 2022
- 3 min read
Brain implants, often referred to as neural implants, are technological devices that connect directly to a biological subject’s brain - usually placed on the surface of the brain or attached to the brain’s cortex. A common purpose of modern brain implants and the focus of much current research is establishing a biomedical prosthesis circumventing areas in the brain, which became dysfunctional after a stroke or other head injuries.
Fig. 1: A schematic introduction of the comprehensive review of the transparent neural interface.
Brain implants electrically stimulate, block or record (or both record and stimulate simultaneously) signals from single neurons or groups of neurons in the brain. This can only be done where the functional associations of these neurons are known. Because of the complexity of neural processing and the lack of access to action potential related signals using neuroimaging techniques, the application of brain implants has been seriously limited until recent advances in neurophysiology and computer processing power. Research in sensory substitution has also made steep progress in recent years.Current brain implants are made from a variety of materials such as tungsten, silicon, platinum-iridium, or even stainless steel.
Figure 1 shows the schematic overview of this paper. In this review, electrophysiological/optical diagnosis and treatment modalities are discussed, and the latest studies integrating these two approaches are introduced. Next, issues that arise when conventional opaque implantable electrode arrays are applied to optogenetics and optical imaging—photoelectric artifacts, optical image blocking, and less light transmission are the cases. Finally, a method for fabricating a transparent electrode that can solve these problems is presented by subdividing it into two categories: from a material point of view and from a structural point of view. As for the material approach of fabricating transparent neural electrodes, an introduction of intrinsically transparent material candidates, such as graphene, carbon nanotubes (CNT), conductive hydrogel, oxides, and conductive polymers, in addition to the latest research are discussed. Lastly, an introduction to research applied to biomedical engineering for a transparent electrode through a special structure is examined. This review consequently suggests the importance of transparent implantable devices for biomedical engineering and medical applications as a next-generation multimodal system for future research.
Brain implants translate paralyzed patients thoughts into speech creep closer to reality. A patient who had a stomach repaired surgery had a blood clot caused by the procedure cut off oxygen to his brain stem, leaving him paralyzed and unable to speak. In February 2019 he had another operation. Surgeon opened his skull and slipped a thin sheet packed with 128 microelectrodes onto the surface of his brain. The system, developed in the lab of UCSF neurosurgeon Edward Chang, would listen in to the electrical impulses firing across patients' motor cortex as he tried to speak, then transmit those signals to a computer, whose language-prediction algorithms would decode them into words and sentences. If it worked, after more than 15 years with only grunts and moans, Patient would have a voice again. According to the report of last year publishment the neuroprosthesis enabled patient typed words on a screen by attempting to speak them. The algorithm correctly constructed sentences from a 50-word vocabulary about 75% of the time.
First Successful Implantation of Revolutionary Wireless Visual Prosthesis Brain Implant was in CHICAGO—February 16, 2022.The Intracortical Visual Prosthesis (ICVP), an implant that bypasses the retina and optic nerves to connect directly to the brain's visual cortex, has been successfully surgically implanted in the ICVP study's first participant at Rush University Medical Center this week. Brain implants for epilepsy do not change an individual's personality or self-perceptions. Some people recover well after brain surgery, but this can take some time.
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