EAGER: Long Term Reliable Neural Recordings and Neuro Modulation Using GHz to THz Ultrasonics

广义上的脑机接口对治疗疾病和提供人机通信的新机制具有潜在的影响。由于车祸、暴力事件和其他身体创伤，成千上万的脊髓损伤新病例导致近25万人不同程度的截瘫。受影响的个人通过外科手术治疗，并且经常需要假肢，由于大脑与假肢致动器和相关控制电子设备之间缺乏信息带宽，假肢在许多方面是原始的。该项目可能导致可靠的脑机接口到神经元和外周轴突，以在患者的一生中传递更大的信息带宽。许多患有帕金森病的患者可以利用终身神经接口来通过可靠的感测和致动来反馈控制电活动。将干细胞可靠地表达为健康神经元的超声波方法可能会导致通过集中表达脑和外周组织内的干细胞来修复脑损伤部分的靶向方法。可靠的终身接口也将为社会的生产带来新的方式。能够收集大脑信号并使用这些数据来确定日常生活中所需的处理过程，可能会为人类完成更多任务提供新的方法，从而为社会向未来发展提供所需的生产力提升。该项目还将培训一名电气工程专业的生物学和神经工程学生，培养多学科技能。这项工作还将导致一个新的GHz到THz超声波科学和技术课程，生成一个在线课程材料，目标是从K-12到应用物理，电气工程和生物医学工程的研究生课程。电子接口对神经科学和神经治疗的影响受到两个主要挑战的限制。一个挑战是长期的电神经接口失败，另一个是缺乏使用干细胞疗法进行神经激活和愈合的具有1- 5 μ m分辨率的轴突和神经元的非侵入性局部激发技术。由对神经元产生的电势和电流进行采样的电极组成的电接口经常用于研究中，一些甚至已经开发了RF供电和RF数据链接的植入式系统。然而，神经探针的寿命不会超过几周到几个月，因为电极上的组织堆积会隔离信号流，即使是电容读出。这个广泛的探索性项目将导致识别从GHz到THz的高频超声的新效应，应用于神经细胞和组织。由于在实验室中进行高频超声波的困难，这种能力在很大程度上未被探索，并且将结果转化为动物模型的实际使用，并最终转化为人类。通过使用能够小型化到CMOS芯片中的技术，可以发现新的超声波效应，可以将其转化为终身可行的神经接口的实践。这些影响包括在100 Hz频率范围内的超声波吸收的新模式，以及在随时间变化的化学和物理变化的神经环境中。使用微米到纳米范围内的非常小的波长，超声波可以聚焦到单个神经组件，例如神经束的单个轴突，而无需侵入性探针。

Brain machine interfaces in the broadest sense have potential impacts on treating diseases and providing new mechanisms for human-machine communications. Thousands of new cases of spinal cord injury result in almost quarter million individuals in various degrees of paraplegia, due to automobile accidents, violent incidents, and other physical traumas. The affected individuals are treated by surgery and often require prosthetics which are in many ways primitive owing to a lack of information bandwidth between the brain and the prosthetic actuators and associated control electronics. This project could lead to reliable brain machine interfaces to neurons and peripheral axons to covey greater bandwidth of information over the lifetime of patients. Many patients suffering from Parkinson's disease can utilize life-long neural interfaces to feedback control electrical activities both through reliable sensing and actuation. Ultrasonic methods to reliably express stem cells into healthy neurons may lead to a targeted approach to repairing damaged parts of the brain by focused expression of stem cells inside brain and peripheral tissues. Reliable life-long interfaces will also lead to new ways for society to be productive. Being able to collect brain signals and using the data to ascertain processing required in daily life may provide new ways for humans to accomplish more tasks providing a productivity boost needed for society to progress into the future. This project will also train an electrical engineering student in biology and neural engineering producing a multidisciplinary skill-set. The work will also result in a new course on Science and Technology of GHz to THz Ultrasonic, generating an online course material aimed from K-12 to graduate program in Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering.Impact of electronic interfaces to neuroscience and neuro therapy is limited by two major challenges. One challenge is the failure of electrical neural interfaces over long term, and the other is the lack of technology for non-invasive, localized excitation of axons and neurons with 1-5ìm resolution for nerve activation and healing using stem cell therapies. Electrical interfaces consisting of electrodes that sample neuron generated potentials and currents are regularly used in research, some even with RF-powered and RF-data linked implantable systems have been developed. However, the neural probes do not last beyond a few weeks to a few months, as tissue buildup on the electrodes insulates the signal flow, even with capacitive readout. This broad exploratory project will lead to the identification of new effects of high frequency ultrasonics from GHz to THz, applied to neural cells and tissues. This capability is largely unexplored owing to the difficulty of conducting high frequency ultrasonic in the laboratory, and have the results translated to actual use in animal models and eventually into humans. By using a technology that enables miniaturization into CMOS chips, new ultrasonic effects may be discovered that can be translated into practice for life-long viable neural interfaces. These effects include new modes of ultrasonic absorption in ultrahigh frequency ranges, and in neural environments with time varying chemical and physical changes. Using the very small wavelengths in the 10s of microns to nanometer range, ultrasonic waves can be focused to individual neural components such as a single axon of a nerve bundle, without invasive probes.