Biodegradable sensor offers safer insights into brain chemistry

In a minimally invasive procedure, the international team of researchers inserted a wireless, biodegradable device into the deep brain region of a mouse. The device collected data on levels of dopamine and other properties of the brain, including pH levels, temperature and electrophysiology before dissolving back into the body.

Dopamine is critical in many neural-related conditions, so a biodegradable sensor to detect the neurotransmitter could be used by doctors for a range of treatments and operations.

“The direct measurement of dopamine can be very significant because of the role that neurotransmitters play in a lot of neural related disease,” said Penn State’s Larry Cheng, the Dorothy Quiggle Professor in Engineering and an associate of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences.  “I think people in the past have been looking at a lot of the other parameters in form of temperature, or fever, or sweating, among others. These related parameters can be very helpful when we don't have the direct measurement, but if we can have the direct measurement of this neurotransmitter at the target location, and in real time, that can be certainly more direct and even more helpful, because information can sometimes be very challenging to infer based on those other parameters.”