Brain research at Brown

Brain implants that record or stimulate neural activity to help people with nervous system damage will be made possible under a new US National Institutes of Health grant awarded to Brown University.

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development awarded the five-year, $6.5m grant to Brown, which will coordinate research with partners from Cyberkinetics and the Cleveland FES Center.

The university-industry team will develop a ‘microsystem-on-a-chip’, a neural interface that is thin, flexible and about as big as an adhesive bandage. Unlike any other neural interface, the new system will be fully implantable and will communicate wirelessly. Information from the brain will be transmitted through the skin in a digital data streaming technique similar to high-speed optical telecommunications. That digitised data can be used to control assistive devices, such as computers or wheelchairs, which bring independence to people with paralysis.