The creation of implants for brain machine interfaces

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Implantation of multi-electrode arrays into the brain is becoming increasingly more prevalent within the neuroscience research community. Many of these studies have been influenced by the recent surge in neural prosthetic research. These arrays are predominantly implanted on the surface of the brain. However, motor and cognitive variables extracted from signals deep in the brain have also been shown to be effective for neural prosthetics. Thus, development of multi-electrode arrays that can be implanted at arbitrary depths is vital to this research. These arrays must be small enough to minimize cortical damage, strong enough to withstand forces encountered due to deep brain insertion, and must remain active for years. Here we develop a research program to design and fabricate novel silicon arrays that meet these criteria. To do this, we will reinforce the silicon probes in order to increase their tensile strength without increasing their diameter. We will also introduce nanoporous holes into the probes and fill them with specific proteins that can encourage neural growth around the probes. This multidisciplinary research will provide funding for 2 PhD students and 2 MSc students. Moreover, these arrays will afford the neuroscience community a new way to measure deep brain function that may lead to a wider range of clinical applications.