We have hundreds of millions of neurons in our brain and thousands of those can be accessed by electrodes using microfabrication technology, which is also used to make computer chips. According to research engineer Angela Tooker of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, microfabrication technology allow neural implants to get very small and able to access all portions of the brain.
“The brain is very specialized, so different regions control different things – there’s a visual cortex that controls all things related to vision; there’s an auditory cortex; there’s sensory regions as well. And depending upon what you want to do, if you want to get to some of the regions which are very deep, you need technology that can get in there, but also want the technology that’s not limited to one electrode. So, with microfabrication technology, we can do thousands of electrodes to be able to access tens of thousands of neurons and we’re starting to be able to then get a real ability to manipulate the brain.”
In particular, researchers are working to develop the world’s first neural device to restore memory loss from disease or traumatic brain injury.
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