Flexible electrodes promise more effective brain function studies

Understanding the workings of the brain has been a major goal for medicine for centuries. Insights into how brains send signals between their many structures  would give doctors valuable insights into the many different types of brain disorders, and allow them to form links between psychological conditions and physical processes, as well as into brain disorders like epilepsy and dementia.

The ability to implant electrodes into the brain to detect signals has allowed much data to be developed, but a new invention from Swedish researchers at Lund University could considerably enhance the capabilities of the technique. The team has developed soft electrodes that are much more compatible with living brain tissue than the stiff, inflexible electrodes that have been the only option up to now.

Brain electrodes are currently either completely rigid, or if they are flexible at all the contain solid chips which create stiff sections. When implanted into the brain — which floats in liquid inside the skull and moves around whenever the head moves and even with breathing — the electrodes rub against brain tissue and damage or even kill the adjacent cells; which are precisely the structures from which they are supposed to be gathering data. This is a particular problem for studies which take place over an extended time period.