Design of Novel Brain-like Materials for Neural Interfacing

In recent years there has been increased interest in the development of microelecrode arrays for implantation in the brain to stimulate paralyzed body parts, to provide blind people with artificial vision, and to allow disabled people to operate a computer-controlled prosthetic device. Current neural probes have achieved superb capability to record and transduce high quality neural signals. Unfortunately, existing electrode arrays show a 40-60% failure rate within the first year, primarily because of encapsulation by scar tissue. It would be most desirable to have electrodes that function for decades. In the Phase I project TDA Research, Inc. and the University of Pittsburgh developed new conducting and insulating materials, shaped them into primitive wires and demonstrated that these new wires caused an inflammatory response up to 91% lower than that caused by traditional wire microelectrodes (parylene C coated tungsten wires) as determined in vitro by activated microglia cell culture experiments. The objective of this Phase II project is to fabricate neural electrode prototypes with these new materials and evaluate their acute and chronic response in animal studies.