Engineering Explained: Neural implants

Our work with Alzheimer's disease could potentially help us reverse the process. Potentially, we can download our memory or even upload the memories. A neuroimplant fiber device is what we put into the brain to try to use it to interact with the neurons. When something is wrong with the brain circuitry, we will exhibit all kinds of disease symptoms such as epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and Alzheimer's disease. What we are trying to do is using this minimally invasive fiber technology to try to understand how the brain functions, how the brain is connected, and then use these fibers to also detect diseases and to treat different kinds of neurological diseases. We are also interested in the possibility of potentially restoring memory or help have better understanding of the memory formation process, our work with Alzheimer's disease could potentially help us reverse the process. Ultimately, we want to build a hybrid system that can enhance human functions to connect the artificial world with our human brain, so that potentially we can download our memory or even upload the memories. Our research focuses on developing these so-called smart fibers or multi-material fibers. We start with a macroscopic preform, typically about one feet long, and it's about one or two inches in diameter, which we'll then put into a fiber drawer tower. The thermal drawer tower is basically an equipment that we can use to create these hundreds of meters of functional smart fibers from one preform. By applying a controlled temperature and stress, we can size down the fiber into a very thin strand. The fibers can range from 50 micrometers, which is basically the size of a human hair, to about 500 microns, or one millimeter in diameter. Regarding the safety of the fibers, our fibers are made from bowel-compatible materials. Most of the components are already FDA-approved for implants. For now, our lab has been focusing on using these devices for studying epilepsy, epileptic seizure. We're trying to use a bouquet of fiber or an array of fiber that can be inserted through a very small burr hole on the skull and then can spread out to cover very large area in the brain. With our fiber devices, we're hoping to precisely detect the seizure onset so we could hopefully prevent the signal from propagating to the entire brain, and we can provide very timely stimulation or therapeutic drugs to try to stop the seizure event. We can also use these fibers for treating Parkinson's disease. So for example, deep brain stimulation has been used in the field for many years. We are trying to create devices that are much smaller and they are programmable. Another very important application is in Alzheimer's disease. We know that Alzheimer's disease is affecting millions of people worldwide, and it's causing significant burden to families, to the society. It's still understudied. So what we're trying to do is trying to use these minimally invasive fibers inside to go deep into the hippocampus region, which is usually where the Alzheimer's disease initiated from. Perhaps by restoring the oxygen levels in the blood vessel, we could restore the neuron activities and could reverse the progression of Alzheimer's disease. My name is Xiaoting Jia. I'm a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Virginia Tech.