Pentagon Developing Brain Implants That Use Fiber Optics to Stimulate Neurons
May 10th, 2010Via: Wired:
Significant progress has already been made in understanding brain injury. Scientists can create conceptual, mathematical models of brain activity, and are also able to record the electrical pulses emitted by individual neurons in the brain, which offers insight into how those neurons communicate. That knowledge has spurred rapid progress in neural-assisted prosthetic devices, a program that Shenoy collaborated on with Geoffrey Ling, the same Darpa program manager behind REPAIR.
But what experts can’t yet do, Shenoy said, is alter those electrical pulses to turn brain circuits on or off. His team will use optogenetics, an emerging technique that involves emitting light pulses to precisely trigger neural activity, to develop an implanted TBI treatment device.
“Before this, emitting light into the brain would be like hitting it with a hammer,” Shenoy said. “What we’re doing now is pin-pointing a single neuron, and that neuron will naturally change its activity depending on the cue.”
The implants developed by the project will likely be composed of electrodes or optical fibers, and will sit on the surface of the brain. They’ll read electrical signals from neurons, and deliver appropriate light pulses to stimulate other brain regions in response. The implants would allow the brain to operate normally, by acting as substitutes for areas that were damaged or “unavailable.”
