Proposal CBET - 1402803 "Bidirectional Wireless Optoelectronic Device for Interfacing Brain Circuits"
The proposed research aims to contribute to the field of neurotechnology by providing a new class of brain "write-in"/ "read-out" devices with unique attributes for bidirectional communication with neural circuits. By developing the new technology for the broader scientific community, the project aims to have an impact on basic neuroscience, especially for primates, while providing an important piece of technology to development of future prospects for treating severely neurologically impaired individuals via direct electronic communications with brain circuits. The proposed technology is based by innovative use of special types of optoelectronic materials combined with advanced microdevice design and fabrication from microcircuits to mobile microsystems. The PI seeks to develop a compact, combinatorial stimulating/recording device system platform for accessing the brain circuits at spatial and temporal specificity not possible before. Further, the entirely wireless, high speed bidirectional electronic communication link to brain circuits will enable testing the new capability in in-vivo mobile animal models for fundamental brain science and neurotechnology development purposes.
The goal of this neuroengineering project is to enable access to a crucial piece in our understanding of the brain, namely mapping of targeted brain circuits to advance fundamental understanding of how units composed of hundreds or thousands of individual neural cells act as a dynamical system while computing e.g. a primate's planning of such motor action as reaching and grasping coupled to perception and other sensory modalities. While sub-centimeter imaging of the functioning brain can be visualized by functional magnetic resonance equipment, we currently lack the full ability to track network dynamics at the spatial and temporal level which defines the most meaningful, yet simplest truly functional computational circuit. The term "mesoscale" has been recently introduced to designate such basic modular constructs which might contain hundreds to thousands of interacting neural cells. The PI proposes to engineer a powerful wireless neurotechnology platform to create a real-time link between targeted brain microcircuits for animal models including non-human primates. The engineering core of the system is a compact, lightweight photonic-microelectronic device, implanted and head-mounted on a subject, with high-speed radio-frequency link to external information processing systems. In summary the aim is to implement a broadband bidirectional wireless neural interface for targeted brain areas of interest. Bidirectionality implies simultaneous neural recording and neural stimulation. The proposed high-speed wireless device technology accomplishes this task for simultaneous recording and stimulation with spatial and temporal resolution to single neuron-level resolution. Having means for precisely controlled spatio-temporally patterned neurostimulation capability of neural circuits enables the tracking and identification of the dynamical trajectories of the associated perturbed brain states by precisely controlled stimulus (excitation and/or inhibition). The recorded neural signals capture all of their relevant temporal information across the multiple probe points, namely as action potentials (spikes), high-frequency oscillations field potentials (LFP), and the underlying low-frequency brain rhythms. The project is a fusion of sophisticated microelectronics and computational neuroscience. Embedded in the research are multiple disciplinary components: photonics, microbiology (of optogenetics), material science and nanofabrication processing, ultralow-power integrated circuits design, high speed microwave telemetry, and computer engineering hardware/software for neural signal processing.
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