A major goal of the BRAIN Initiative is in creating new systems for being able to record and modulate neuronal activity across wide areas of cortex and at the scale of small ensembles and even individual neurons. Current technologies are limited in being wired, requiring a reference, and subject to biofouling. They are also essentially linear ? arrays or 2D grids and strips are all that is possible. For this project an interdisciplinary group of researchers spanning fields of engineering, neuroscience and clinical neurology propose an entirely new concept. The engine of this approach is an early-stage project to design, fabricate and characterize a wireless microscale neuronal recording and stimulation system. This system is based on microscale antennas that are ultra-sensitive to changes in magnetic fields and also capable of generating steep local magnetic gradients. We plan to use such antennas to sense neuronal activity as represented in local field potentials and multi- and even single unit activity. These antennas are coupled to nano-scale radio frequency identification (NanoNeuroRFID) elements which allow for data communication and power transmission. The entire unit can be scaled to dimensions of 0.05mm 1mm 1mm and works completely wirelessly. They can then be incorporated into sheets or placed directly into the parenchyma of the brain to form a distributed, wireless, networked system for large-scale neural magnetic recording and modulation. This proposal details an interdisciplinary 3-year plan integrating innovative technological developments with basic neuroscience testing with the goal of transforming the way that neural recording and modulation can be used in both the research and clinical environment. Four inter-related aims will be pursued for this project: The first three aims focus on building blocks of the design and engineering of the devices. This includes (Aim 1) optimization of the antenna;
(Aim 2) design and fabrication of integrated circuits for wireless magnetoelectric resonant energy harvesting and (Aim 3) creation of bidirectional communication links for the devices.
The final aim sets out to use hippocampal slices and in vivo experiments with rodents to provide proof of concept capabilities in recording and stimulating neuronal tissue. This is done in a milestone based fashion, starting first with tests of the antenna as a tethered device (in concert with Aim 1) able to record and stimulate from single neurons help under patch clamp in slice and then moves on to testing of distributed devices in vitro and then in vivo as the fabrication of Aims 2 and 3 are achieved. Together, this integrated program of sophisticated materials science, electrical engineering and biology is poised to create a system which could completely alter the landscape of brain area mapping and modulation.
A major goal of the BRAIN Initiative is in creating new systems for being able to record and modulate neuronal activity across wide areas of cortex and at the scale of small ensembles and even individual neurons. This project seeks to develop a new implantable nanoscale neural radio frequency identification (NanoNeuroRFID) system based on acoustically actuated ultra-compact magnetoelectric antennas that sense changes in magnetic fields induced by neurons, and also magnetically stimulate neurons in a precise fashion. As each microdevice is independent, addressable, wireless and battery-less, they can be distributed in high density across the brain to form a distributed, wireless, networked system for large-scale neural magnetic recording and modulation.
