Tiny Brain Implant Controlled by Smartphone

If further tests are successful, a tiny brain implant controlled by a smartphone could help to speed up efforts to uncover brain diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, addiction, depression and pain.

The smartphone-controlled, minimally invasive, soft optofluidic probe (a wireless neural with replaceable drug cartridges) targets specific neurons of interest with drug and light for prolonged periods.

Raza Qazi, a researcher with the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and University of Colorado Boulder has said that previous solutions using soft probes and wireless platforms have been limited by their inability to deliver drugs for long periods of time and their bulky and complex control setups.

The device is an outcome of a three year global collaboration between engineers and neuroscientists and many design iterations that have seen the tiny brain implant successfully validated in mice. The team at KAIST develop soft electronics for wearable and implantable devices, and the neuroscientists at the Bruchas lab at the University of Washington study brain circuits that control stress, depression, addiction, pain and other neuropsychiatric disorders. The parties involved say the new smartphone controlled device could deliver further valuable insights to the brain and its various diseases.

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