Brain Implant Reads Electrical Activity

Oct-28-18 A new, minimally invasive brain implant lets MRI devices measure both light and electrical fields simultaneously.

The ability to measure the electrical and light activity of the brain could be a valuable therapeutic tool, but typical methods have been extremely invasive. To offer a more convenient method, the team from MIT created an implantable antenna able to detect the radio signals generated by hydrogen atoms in brain tissue. When those signals are detected, the sensor’s tuning is altered, creating a weaker image when the sensor is scanned by an MRI machine.

According to MIT professor Alan Jananoff, “We showed that these devices are sensitive to biological-scale potentials, on the order of millivolts, which are comparable to what biological tissue generates, especially in the brain.”

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[MEDGADGET.COM]
[NEWS.MIT.EDU]

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