Being able to accurately record brain activity over long periods of time holds promise for paralyzed people to control prosthetic devices or even their own arms and legs again. That’s can be thought of as only a start of course, as the brain is central to many diseases and conditions, as well as being a player in the functionality of the rest of the body. Today accurate recordings can only be done by implanting electrode arrays via an open craniotomy, but there are serious limitations such as potential for infection and the degradation of the effectiveness of electrodes that are in contact with brain tissue for long periods of time.
Researchers at University of Melbourne in Australia have now developed a vascular stent-electrode, which they call a stentrode, that can be delivered up the vasculature into the brain to make high quality recordings of neural activity. The researcheres tested the device in freely walking sheep that had the implant delivered into the superficial cortical vein that’s next to the motor cortex. They were able to accurately record the electrical activity of the motor cortex that the researchers were able to favorably compare to what was gathered using traditional epidural surface array electrodes.
Study in Nature Biotechnology: Minimally invasive endovascular stent-electrode array for high-fidelity, chronic recordings of cortical neural activity…
Source: University of Melbourne…
(hat tip: Engadget)