Good News Around The World: Wireless Implant That 'Speaks' to the Brain with Light Paves The Way To Potentially Restoring Lost Senses...

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Around the size of a postage stamp and thinner than a credit card, a wireless implant that “speaks” to the brain could help restore lost senses.



The device uses light to send information directly to the brain, bypassing the body’s natural sensory pathways in what scientists are hailing as a “leap” for neurobiology and bioelectronics.

The technology has immense potential for several therapeutic applications, according to a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The research team say these include providing sensory feedback for prosthetic limbs, delivering artificial stimuli for future vision or hearing prostheses, modulating pain perception without opioids or systemic drugs, enhancing rehabilitation after stroke or serious injury, and controlling robotic limbs with the brain.

In experiments, the publishing scientists—based at Northwestern University in Illinois—used the device’s tiny, patterned bursts of light to activate specific groups of neurons deep inside the brains of mice.

Even without touch, sight, or sound involved, the rodents received information to make decisions and successfully completed behavioral tasks. The mice quickly learned to interpret the patterns as meaningful signals, which they could recognize and use.

“Our brains are constantly turning electrical activity into experiences, and this technology gives us a way to tap into that process directly,” said Northwestern neurobiologist Professor Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, who led the experimental work. “This platform lets us create entirely new signals and see how the brain learns to use them.”

It brings us just a little bit closer to restoring lost senses after injuries or disease while offering a window into the basic principles that allow us to perceive the world.”

The new study builds on previous work by Northwestern scientists in which they introduced the first fully implantable, programmable, wireless, battery-free device capable of controlling neurons with light.

The previous study used a single micro-LED probe to influence social behavior in mice, while the new study takes the research a step further by enabling richer, more flexible communication with the brain.

“Developing this device required rethinking how to deliver patterned stimulation to the brain in a format that is both minimally invasive and fully implantable,” said Northwestern bioelectronics pioneer Professor John Rogers.

Going beyond the ability to activate and deactivate a single region of neurons, the new device features a programmable array of up to 64 micro-LEDs. With real-time control over each LED, scientists can send complex sequences to the brain that may resemble the distributed activity that occurs during natural sensations.

The research team explained that because real sensory experiences activate distributed cortical networks—not tiny, localized groups of neurons—the multi-region design mimics more natural patterns of brain activity.

“The number of patterns we can generate with various combinations of LEDs, frequency, intensity, and temporal sequence, is nearly infinite,” said study first author Dr. Mingzheng Wu.

Now that the team has shown the brain can interpret patterned stimulation as meaningful signals, they plan to test more complex patterns and explore how many distinct patterns the brain can learn.