(Press-News.org) It's a notion that might be pulled from the pages of science-fiction novel - electronic devices that can be injected directly into the brain, or other body parts, and treat everything from neurodegenerative disorders to paralysis.
It sounds unlikely, until you visit Charles Lieber's lab.
A team of international researchers, led by Lieber, the Mark Hyman, Jr. Professor of Chemistry, an international team of researchers developed a method for fabricating nano-scale electronic scaffolds that can be injected via syringe. Once connected to electronic devices, the scaffolds can be used to monitor neural activity, stimulate tissues and even promote regenerations of neurons. The study is described in a June 8 paper in Nature Nanotechnology.
Contributing to the work were Jia Liu, Tian-Ming Fu, Zengguang Cheng, Guosong Hong, Tao Zhou, Lihua Jin, Madhavi Duvvuri, Zhe Jiang, Peter Kruskal, Chong Xie, Zhigang Suo, Ying Fang
"I do feel that this has the potential to be revolutionary," Lieber said. "This opens up a completely new frontier where we can explore the interface between electronic structures and biology. For the past thirty years, people have made incremental improvements in micro-fabrication techniques that have allowed us to make rigid probes smaller and smaller, but no one has addressed this issue - the electronics/cellular interface - at the level at which biology works."
The idea of merging the biological with the electronic is not a new one for Lieber.
In an earlier study, scientists in Lieber's lab demonstrated that the scaffolds could be used to create "cyborg" tissue - when cardiac or nerve cells were grown with embedded scaffolds. Researchers were then able to use the devices to record electrical signals generated by the tissues, and to measure changes in those signals as they administered cardio- or neuro-stimulating drugs.
"We were able to demonstrate that we could make this scaffold and culture cells within it, but we didn't really have an idea how to insert that into pre-existing tissue," Lieber said. "But if you want to study the brain or develop the tools to explore the brain-machine interface, you need to stick something into the body. When releasing the electronics scaffold completely from the fabrication substrate, we noticed that it was almost invisible and very flexible like a polymer and could literally be sucked into a glass needle or pipette. From there, we simply asked, would it be possible to deliver the mesh electronics by syringe needle injection, a process common to delivery of many species in biology and medicine - you could go to the doctor and you inject this and you're wired up.'"
Though not the first attempts at implanting electronics into the brain - deep brain stimulation has been used to treat a variety of disorders for decades - the nano-fabricated scaffolds operate on a completely different scale.
"Existing techniques are crude relative to the way the brain is wired," Lieber explained. "Whether it's a silicon probe or flexible polymers...they cause inflammation in the tissue that requires periodically changing the position or the stimulation. But with our injectable electronics, it's as if it's not there at all. They are one million times more flexible than any state-of-the-art flexible electronics and have subcellular feature sizes. They're what I call "neuro-philic" - they actually like to interact with neurons.."
Despite their enormous potential, the fabrication of the injectable scaffolds is surprisingly easy.
"That's the beauty of this - it's compatible with conventional manufacturing techniques," Lieber said.
The process is similar to that used to etch microchips, and begins with a dissolvable layer deposited on a substrate. To create the scaffold, researchers lay out a mesh of nanowires sandwiched in layers of organic polymer. The first layer is then dissolved, leaving the flexible mesh, which can be drawn into a syringe needle and administered like any other injection.
After injection, the input/output of the mesh can be connected to standard measurement electronics so that the integrated devices can be addressed and used to stimulate or record neural activity.
"These type of things have never been done before, from both a fundamental neuroscience and medical perspective," Lieber said. "It's really exciting - there are a lot of potential applications."
Going forward, Lieber said, researchers hope to better understand how the brain and other tissues react to the injectable electronics over longer periods.
Harvard's Office of Technology Development has filed for a provisional patent on the technology and is actively seeking commercialization opportunities.
"Having those results can prove that this is really a viable technology," Lieber said. "The idea of being able to precisely position and record from very specific areas, or even from specific neurons over an extended period of time - this could, I think, make a huge impact on neuroscience."
INFORMATION:
Genes linked to creativity could increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to new research carried out by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London.
Previous studies have identified a link between creativity and psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, but it has remained unclear whether this association is due to common genes. Published today in Nature Neuroscience, this new study lends support to the direct influence on creativity of genes found in people with schizophrenia ...
ITHACA, N.Y. - If you want people to choose healthier foods, emphasize the positive, says a new Cornell University study.
Published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Cornell Food and Brand Lab study showed that when it comes to nutrition education, dos work a lot better than don'ts. This is especially important when determining policies that encourage healthy eating.
Media note: A short video explaining the research, as well as an informational graphic and additional details about this research can be found at, http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/OP/Hidden_Costs ...
This news release is available in French. A new joint study by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, both at McGill University, has cast some light on the brain mechanisms that support people's voting decisions. Evidence in the study shows that a part of the brain called the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (LOFC) must function properly if voters are to make choices that combine different sources of information about the candidates. The study found that damage to the LOFC leads people to base their vote ...
A new study gives insight into the mental health of children and teens with Down syndrome and the behavioral medications that medical caregivers sometimes prescribe for them.
The Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study shows that teens and young adults between the ages of 12 and 21 were significantly more likely to be on psychotropic medications than children 5 to 11 years old. Among children less than 12, the odds of being on a psychotropic medication increased with age for all classes of medications studied. For 12 to 18 year olds, the odds of being on ...
NEW YORK, NY (June 8, 2015) - Columbia University scientists have developed a computational method to investigate the relationship between birth month and disease risk. The researchers used this algorithm to examine New York City medical databases and found 55 diseases that correlated with the season of birth. Overall, the study indicated people born in May had the lowest disease risk, and those born in October the highest. The study was published in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association.
"This data could help scientists uncover new disease risk factors," ...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Researchers from Brown University are developing a new algorithm to help robots better plan their actions in complex environments. It's designed to help robots be more useful in the real world, but it's being developed with the help of a virtual world -- that of the video game Minecraft.
Basic action planning, while easy for humans, is a frontier of robotics. Part of the problem is that robots don't intuitively ignore objects and actions that are irrelevant to the task at hand. For example, if someone asked you to empty the trashcan ...
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have uncovered physical mechanisms allowing the manipulation of magnetic information with heat. These new phenomena rely on the transport of thermal energy, in contrast to the conventional application of magnetic fields, providing a new, and highly desirable way to manipulate magnetization at the nanoscale.
"In our study, we make use of the fact that a heat current passing through a magnetic material creates a separation of electron spins. This process creates a current of magnetic dipoles that we use to manipulate ...
DARIEN, IL - A new study suggests that increased restless legs syndrome (RLS) severity is associated with subsequent increased risk of stroke.
Results show that increased RLS severity is associated with subsequent increased risk of stroke, after considering other known risk factors such as age, smoking, hypertension, and unhealthy diet. There were 161 incident stroke cases during the six-year follow-up.
"We were surprised at the importance of taking into account RLS severity -- it was only severe RLS, not milder RLS, that was associated with increased risk of stroke," ...
DARIEN, IL - A new study suggests that lower life satisfaction is linked to sleep problems during midlife.
Respondents with higher life satisfaction reported shorter sleep onset latency (SOL). Sleep onset delay among those with low life satisfaction could be the result of worry and anxiety, as reported elsewhere. These findings support the idea that life satisfaction is interlinked with many measures of sleep and sleep quality, suggesting that improving one of these variables might result in improving the other.
"These findings support the idea that life satisfaction ...
URBANA, Ill. - Emerging adults aged 18 to 25 are often criticized for their poor interpersonal skills, sense of entitlement, and casual work ethic. But a new University of Illinois study suggests that fault-finding adult co-workers could make a big difference in young workers' leadership development by developing relationships with them, modeling the behaviors they wish to see, and providing leadership growth opportunities.
"Young adults in our study had learned a lot from mentors who modeled initiative, drive, and persistence; demonstrated how to communicate with confidence ...
