Institutional development · Research, innovation and assessment · Switzerland
EPFL lab builds implantable chip that tracks signalling between brain regions
An EPFL team says its implantable neural chip follows exchanges among several brain regions and recognises cognitive and emotional states as they happen.
Why it matters: Teams developing brain stimulation for psychiatric conditions are the researchers most directly addressed by EPFL's chip, which reads several interacting regions rather than one.
EPFL reported that a team of its researchers has created an implantable neural chip able to follow signalling between different brain regions and to recognise cognitive and emotional states as they occur.
The university said most deep brain stimulation (DBS) devices, which send electrical pulses into targeted brain areas, run on fixed settings instead of responding to a patient's neural activity, and that many adaptive versions monitor only one region.
Mahsa Shoaran, who heads EPFL's Integrated Neurotechnologies Lab, part of its School of Engineering and Neuro-X Institute, said the project rests on evidence that psychiatric conditions stem chiefly from faulty exchanges among brain regions rather than a failure in one area.
The lab's team works at EPFL's Geneva campus.
Editor’s view
Scott James, Research and Innovation Editor
Researchers exploring brain stimulation for conditions such as severe depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder are the group EPFL's Geneva-based lab is addressing with a chip that reads activity across several interacting regions instead of a single one.
