No need to wait for the cyborg future—it’s already here. Adding to a growing list of electronics that can be implanted in the body, scientists are working to perfect the ultimate merger of mind and machine: devices fused directly to the brain.
A new type of flexible electronics can be injected through a syringe to unfurl and implant directly into the brains of mice, shows a study published in Nature Nanotechnology. Researchers injected a fine electronic mesh and were able to monitor brain activity in the mice.
“You’re blurring the living and the nonliving,” says Charles Lieber, a nanoscientist at Harvard and co-author of the study. One day, he says, electronics might not only monitor brain activity but also deliver therapeutic treatments for Parkinson’s disease, or even act as a bridge over damaged areas of the brain. Deep brain stimulation is already used for Parkinson’s, but uses relatively large probes, which can cause formation of scar tissue around the probe.
At the website Dangerous Things, you can buy a kit—complete with syringe, surgical gloves and Band-Aid—to inject a small electronic device into your own body. The kits use a radio-frequency ID tag, or RFID, similar to the chips implanted to identify lost dogs and cats. These can be scanned to communicate with other devices. The site warns that implanting the chips should be done with medical supervision and “is strictly at your own risk.”
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