CENTER FOR NEURAL COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY

该中心提案的主要目的是使系统神经生物学的研究人员、神经假体设计师和其他电生理学家能够使用在硅衬底上构建的多通道薄膜设备与可兴奋组织进行交流。具有数十到数百个记录或刺激位点的一维、二维和三维阵列可以定制设计，以适应特定组织通信应用的需要。该中心有一个重要的服务和技术转让组成部分。该中心通过多种媒体对研究人员进行技术及其使用方面的教育。新用户首先获得在中心发布的目录中找到的库存设备，然后与中心工作人员一起设计新的探针，并将互连技术与他们的应用相匹配。该中心的服务部分和研究项目旨在未来五年将技术推向三个主要方向：1)通过开发数据库和模型来定量地指导研究人员和设计师，使探针的设计更加合理；2)扩大该中心的分布范围，包括流体输送探针、带有有源电路的探针、涂有生物活性材料的探针和三维探针；3)将制造从大学实验室转移到商业制造设施。三个内部研究项目推动了这些推动力。这些项目涵盖了设备技术的扩展，通过实验和建模，更全面地了解设备的记录和刺激特性，以及开发方法，通过这些方法可以在死后确认组织和设备之间的精确几何关系。除了这些项目之外，还有几个与大学和工业界的研究人员合作的项目，涉及我们所有的主要应用领域。

The major thrust of this Center proposal is to enable research investigators in systems neurobiology, neuroprosthesis designers and other electrophysiologists to communicate with excitable tissue using multichannel thin-film devices constructed on silicon substrates. One, two and three dimensional arrays with tens to hundreds of recording or stimulation sites can be custom designed to fit the needs of specific tissue communication applications. There is a significant service and technology transfer component to this center. The Center educates investigators on the technology and its use through a number of media. New users are first given stock devices found in a catalog published by the Center and proceed to working with the Center staff to design new probes and matching an interconnect technology to their application. The service component and the research projects of the Center are designed to move the technology in three major directions over the next five years: 1) make the design of probes more rational by developing a data base and models will quantitatively guide researchers and designers, 2) broaden the distribution offerings of the Center include fluid delivery probes, probes with active circuits, probes coated with bioactive materials and three dimensional probes and 3) move the fabrication from University Laboratories to commercial fabrication facilities. Three internal research projects drive these thrusts. These projects cover extensions of the device technology, through experimentation and modeling, understand more fully the recording and stimulation characteristics of the devices, and development of methods by which exact geometrical relationships between tissue and devices can be confirmed postmortem. In addition to these projects there are several collaborative projects with investigators in universities and industry involving all of our major application areas.