Workaround
Scientists connected the brain to a computer through blood vessels
Georgy Golovanov, Hi-tech+
A team of scientists and engineers from Australia and the USA have demonstrated a fundamentally new approach to connecting the brain to a computer – without drilling the skull and inserting needles-electrodes into the brain. They used blood vessels as wiring, into which stents with electrodes were inserted. Two paralyzed patients were able to use the new solution to send text messages and fully communicate online.
Article by Oxley et al. Minimally invasive endovascular stent-electrode array for high-fidelity, chronic recordings of cortical neural activity published in the journal Nature Biotechnology – VM.
"Stenting technology is well represented both in cardiology and in neurology for the treatment of other diseases. We just used its capabilities and put the electrodes inside the stents," explained Thomas Oxley, a neurologist and head of Synchron, a company that is going to commercialize this technology. – It's completely implantable. Patients can go home in a couple of days."
The idea of Synchron scientists is to connect elastic stent tubes with electrodes, which are then inserted into the blood vessels of the brain.
The technology has already been tested on two patients with amyotrophic lateral syndrome, who were injected with stents through a vein in the neck, and then passed them through a network of vessels to the primary motor cortex. The electrodes began to perceive motor signals sent by the brain and transmit them wirelessly to a computer – through an infrared transmitter surgically implanted in the chest.
After surgery, the machine learning algorithm takes a couple of weeks to figure out what the different brain signals mean. After that, both patients were able to use a device that tracks eye movement to move the cursor on the computer monitor and press the mouse button with the power of thought. They got the opportunity to exchange messages, make purchases online and lead an active digital life.
The US FDA has not yet certified Oxley's invention. The company is still looking for funding to conduct further tests, but preliminary results show that the neurointerface works, albeit not as well as other, more invasive methods. So far, one "stentrod" receives only one bit of information, which limits the use of technology. In addition, the walls of blood vessels make it difficult to transmit a signal. But there is no need to drill the skull and violate the integrity of the brain structures by inserting electrodes in the form of needles into them.
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