In 2004, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester, UK, achieved a breakthrough by isolating graphene for the first time. Graphene, a flat form of carbon made of a single layer of atoms, is one of the thinnest and strongest materials known. It was hailed as a wonder material and won Geim and Novoselov the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.
Twenty years later, graphene is finally being used in batteries, sensors, semiconductors, air conditioners, and even headphones. And now it’s being tested in people’s brains.
This morning, surgeons at the University of Manchester temporarily placed a thin, cellophane tape-like implant made of graphene into the patient’s cortex, the outermost layer of the brain. Manufactured by the Spanish company InBrain Neuroelectronics, the technology is a type of brain-computer interface, a device that collects and decodes brain signals. InBrain is among several companies developing BCIs, including Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
“We aim to develop commercial products that can perform brain decoding and brain mapping and can be used for a variety of disorders,” said Carolina Aguilar, CEO and co-founder of InBrain. Masu.
Brain mapping is a technique used to help plan brain surgery. For example, when removing a brain tumor, surgeons can place electrodes in the brain to locate motor and language functions in the brain and safely remove the tumor without affecting the patient’s motor or speech abilities. I will do so.
Today’s surgery took 79 minutes to place the implant. The patient had already undergone brain surgery to remove the tumor and consented to the experiment. At the time, researchers observed that the InBrain device was able to distinguish between healthy and cancerous brain tissue with micrometer-scale precision.
The University of Manchester is the site of InBrain’s first human trial, which will test the graphene device on up to 10 patients who have already undergone brain surgery for other reasons. The aim of the study, funded by the European Commission’s Graphene Flagship Project, is to demonstrate the safety of graphene in direct contact with the human brain.
David Koop, the neurosurgeon who performed the surgery, said the InBrain device is more flexible than traditional electrodes and can better conform to the surface of the brain. “From a surgical perspective, it means that we can probably place electrodes in places that are difficult to place electrodes,” he says. The main electrodes used for brain mapping are platinum-iridium discs set in silicon. “So it’s reasonably stiff,” Koop says.
In contrast, the InBrain device is a transparent sheet that is placed on the surface of the brain. It contains 48 tiny decoding graphene electrodes, each just 25 micrometers, half the thickness of a human hair. The company is developing a second type of implant that can penetrate brain tissue and deliver precise electrical stimulation.
While the surface device can be used alone for brain mapping, Aguilar said the company is also integrating the two devices and plans to eventually test them together as a treatment for neurological diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. It is said that
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