Analysis
Innovative neural probe senses and stimulates individual brain cells
Imec, together with its partners within the European FP6 Program NeuroProbes, has created a new neural probe enabling electrical and chemical recording and stimulation of single neurons in the brain. Applications of the new technology are vast, ranging from tools for fundamental research on the functioning of the brain, to instruments for more precise diagnosis of brain seizures before brain-surgery.
To dThe new EDC neural probe technology opens the door to dozens of new research tracks, and even promises to refine work currently underway. Next to fundamental brain research, one of the key roles of the EDC technology is pre-operative diagnostics prior to brain surgery for a variety of conditions. “It is known that similar probes have been used for decades to discover the focus of an epileptic seizure, for example,” explains Herc Neves, scientist at Belgium’s imec and coordinator of the NeuroProbes project. “You have a patient that is about to be operated on, and you want to remove as little tissue as possible. By pinpointing where the seizure is generated, you remove only that tissue, resulting in safer and less invasive surgery.”
This work was part of the NeuroProbes project (coordinated by imec), partly funded by the European Commission under Framework Program 6. EDC probes have been validated and used successfully in scientific experiments by neuroscientists at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the University of Parma (Italy). EDC technology is the result of a close collaboration with the Microsystem Materials Laboratory of the Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) at University of Freiburg (Germany).
Image: Neural probe with electronic depth control enabling electrical and chemical recording and stimulation of single neurons in the brain.