SBIR Phase I: A Novel Wireless Combined Neural Recording and Stimulating Headstage

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I research project will develop a miniature implantable, remotely powered, and wireless recording and stimulating device. The ability to electrically stimulate the nervous tissue using the same implant with the same electrode arrays would allow for experimental paradigms involving a real-time feedback loop, where the current state of the neural area-of-interest serves to modulate the manner in which it is stimulated. The commercial application of this project will be in the area of neuroprosthetics. The neuroprosthetic market is projected to be of the order of 1 billion dollar a year by 2005. There are over 220,000 paraplegics in the United States and 1 million worldwide who are paralyzed from spinal cord injury or from multiple sclerosis. Age related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa affect more than 10 million people around the world. When this implantable wireless recording and stimulation system becomes available, human clinical prosthetics designed to cure or alleviate these afflictions will come one step closer to reality.