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

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

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.