This award provides funds to help with the establishment and initial operation of a microfabrication facility that will produce semi-conductor devices to be used in neuroscience, microelectronics and related areas of microdevice research. The neuroscience devices will be used for both in vitro and in vivo experimentation aimed at the simultaneous monitoring of the activity of an array of nerve cells. Other types of devices to be fabricated include micro-robots, -sensors, -antennas and pumps. An important role of the he facility is expected to be the training of students and advanced investigators who have need of these devices in the techniques used for microfabrication. The remarkable progress in the miniaturization of electronic circuit boards has lead to the realization that a variety of other types of micrometer-sized devices can be made. these include both mechanical and electronic devices. In particular, the ability to fabricate microchip-like multi-well cell culture dishes, where each well is the size of a single cell, has opened up the possibility of simultaneous recording of the activity of each of many interconnected nerve cells growing in culture. This type of experimentation could lead to significant advances in understanding the operation of networks of nerve cells, an area which has, in recent years, been the subject of much theoretical interest. Similar devices, which could be implanted directly in the brain, should allow measurement of the activity of many cells in a single region of the brain. Such experimentation has enormous potential for clarifying our understanding of the functional organization of the brain and of how brain cells integrate and differentiate sensory input.
