Without spoiling the skull
Chinese engineers have successfully implanted a chip into the brain without opening the skull
Stepan Ikaev, Hi-tech+
Scientists from Nankai University in Tianjin have announced revolutionary progress in the creation of safe neurotransplantation technology. Engineers managed to insert an electronic chip into the goat's brain without opening its skull. To do this, they used an endovascular device that was inserted through a vein and, after moving to the desired area of the motor cortex, began to accurately read the signals of the animal's brain. According to the developers, the new approach is much safer than open-brain surgery, which carries risks of infection and tissue damage.
"The biggest advantage of this technique is that it does not require invasive open-brain surgery to receive electrical signals, and the entire operation can be completed in less than two hours. This approach is a completely new way to register electrical signals of the brain. This solution can become a breakthrough technology," said Professor Duan Feng, who heads the project. He also noted that this experiment was the first of its kind for the Chinese scientific community.
During the study, Feng and his colleagues inserted a stent into a vein and guided it through the vessels to the area of the motor cortex of the animal's brain. The chip itself was delivered through the stent to the right place. When the sensor took the right position, it connected the electrodes to the walls of the blood vessels and began to register strong and clear electrical signals from the goat's brain. The procedure was carried out using a high-precision robot. The collected data was transmitted to the computer remotely.
According to the project manager, in comparison with the described technologies, traditional implants are destructive and far from practical application of the system. Using endovascular devices instead, scientists and doctors will be able to guarantee their patients the safety of surgery and the integrity of the brain, Feng is sure.
According to the South China Morning Post, scientists have been studying various brain implants for decades, hoping to restore damaged nerve pathways in people with Parkinson's disease, paralysis and other diseases. With the development of technology, promising projects began to appear more often — in addition to pharmaceutical and biochemical companies, large IT companies joined the work on neuroimplants.
One of the most notable is Neuralink, founded by Elon Musk. The company is working on wireless microchips with AI support that can be embedded in people's brains, eliminating intractable diseases and connecting their brains directly to the control of various electronics. However, unlike the system shown by Chinese scientists, the Neuralink chip is inserted into the brain invasively, which creates significant risks of infection and destruction of brain tissue.
In particular, Neuralink was forced to euthanize eight experimental monkeys because of its unsuccessful experiments. However, a significant part of the tests at the American company was successful, so next year Neuralink plans to switch to experiments with human participation.
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