"By providing higher resolution views of the human brain, this technology can improve clinical practices and could lead to high performance brain machine interfaces," Gilja said. Researchers published their work on May 12 in Advanced Functional Materials. The project was funded by the Center for Brain Activity Mapping (CBAM) at UC San Diego and brought together experts from multiple fields, including neurosurgeons, neuroscientists, electrical engineers, materials scientists and experts in systems integration.
"Our goal is to develop a tool that can obtain more reliable information from the surface of the brain," said electrical engineering professor Shadi Dayeh, who co-led the study with neuroscience professor Eric Halgren and electrical engineering professor Vikash Gilja, all at UC San Diego. The new electrode grid also contains a much higher density of electrodes - spaced 25 times closer than those in clinical electrode grids - enabling it to generate higher resolution recordings. This allows it to conform better to the intricately curved surface of the brain and obtain better readings. The new electrode grid, developed by a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego and Massachusetts General Hospital, is about a thousand times thinner - 6 micrometers versus several millimeters thick - than clinical electrode grids. Despite their wide use, electrode grids have remained bulky and have not experienced any major advances over the last 20 years. Neurosurgeons use electrode grids to identify which areas of the brain are diseased in order to avoid damaging or removing healthy, functional tissue during operations. The device is an improved version of a clinical tool called an electrode grid, which is a plastic or silicone-based grid of electrodes that is placed directly on the surface of the brain during surgery to monitor the activity of large groups of neurons.
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