CAREER: Towards High-Channel-Count Invasive and High-Resolution Non-Invasive Electrical Neural Interfaces

神经接口是神经科学研究中更好地了解大脑的强大工具，并越来越多地用于临床应用。例如，建立在大规模神经记录基础上的新兴脑机接口可以破译大脑活动；然后，解码的信息可以用来控制神经假体，为瘫痪患者恢复失去的感觉或运动功能。在神经刺激方面，脑深部刺激已被证明在治疗某些大脑疾病方面非常有效，方法是以预先定义的模式注入脉冲电流。尽管这些结果非常令人鼓舞，但为了充分释放神经接口的潜力，使其在未来广泛和标准的人类临床使用中使用，需要开发新的设备功能，并显著提高硬件性能。对于有创神经接口来说，现在最大的挑战是增加同步记录通道的数量，以便能够以更高的自由度控制更复杂的假肢。对于非侵入性神经接口，一个新的需求是开发新的刺激技术，可以取代今天的侵入性脑深部刺激，以确保脑疾病治疗的长期安全性。本项目旨在通过开发高通道数植入式神经接口和非侵入性高聚焦脑深部刺激系统来满足上述两个迫切需求。通过其连贯的教育和推广计划，该项目还将通过吸引研究生、本科生和高中生，特别是来自STEM中代表性较低的少数群体的学生，来培训硬件工程方面的下一代劳动力。这个项目有两个研究推动力。第一次推力将开发出一种完全封装的植入式神经接口，具有比最先进技术高十倍以上的通道数。此外，该硬件将实现全频谱覆盖，记录具有可编程刺激能力的局部场电位和动作电位。完整的硬件模块将包括一个低功耗专用集成电路(ASIC)，它可以记录、刺激、数字化和流出高通量神经信号，一个灵活的皮质内神经探头将与ASIC一起倒装芯片封装，以及一个高速数字后端，将数据从ASIC转发到计算机进行实时数据处理。第二个推进器将开发一种基于时间干扰电磁波的非侵入性脑深部刺激系统。研究任务包括多物理建模、仿真硬件实现以及使用模型和动物模型进行验证。总体而言，这项研究将有机会影响未来脑机接口、神经假体和脑疾病治疗的关键设计。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Neural interfaces serve as a powerful tool in neuroscience research to better understand the brain and are increasingly intended for clinical applications. For example, emerging brain-machine interfaces built on the large-scale neural recording can decipher brain activities; the decoded information can then be used to control neural prosthetics to restore lost sensory or motor functions for paralyzed patients. On the neural stimulation side, deep brain stimulation has proven to be highly effective in treating certain brain disorders by injecting a pulsed current with a pre-defined pattern. Although these results are highly encouraging, to fully unlock the potential of neural interfaces for future widespread and standard-of-care human clinical use, new device capabilities need to be developed with significantly improved hardware performance. For invasive neural interfaces, the biggest challenge now is to increase the number of simultaneous recording channels to enable control of more sophisticated prosthetics with higher degrees of freedom. For non-invasive neural interfaces, an emerging need is to develop new stimulation techniques that can replace today’s invasive deep brain stimulations to ensure long-term safety in brain disorder treatment. This project aims to address the above two pressing needs by developing a high-channel-count implanted neural interface and a non-invasive high-focality deep brain stimulation system. Through its coherent educational and outreach plan, this project will also train the next-generation workforce in hardware engineering by engaging graduate, undergraduate, and high-school students, especially those from underrepresented minority groups in STEM. There are two research thrusts in this project. The first thrust will develop a fully packaged implanted neural interface with higher channel counts of more than ten times of the state of the art. Additionally, the hardware will enable full spectrum coverage to record both local field potentials and action potentials with programmable stimulation capability. The complete hardware module will include a low-power application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that can record, stimulate, digitize, and stream out high-throughput neural signals, a flexible intracortical neural probe that will be flip-chip packaged with the ASIC, and a high-speed digital backend that relays the data from the ASIC to a computer for real-time data processing. The second thrust will develop a non-invasive deep brain stimulation system based on temporally interfering EM waves. The research tasks include multi-physics modeling, stimulation hardware implementation, and validation using phantom and animal model. Overall, this research will have the opportunity to impact the key designs in future brain-machine interfaces, neural prostheses, and the treatment of brain disorders.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.