Brain control via blood vessel stent

• Autores: Alice Klein
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3126, 2017, pág. 12
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • A research team led by Thomas Oxley at the University of Melbourne has developed a way of implanting electrodes in the brain without opening up the skull. Their electrodes are attached to a metallic mesh tube that is guided through a small incision in the jugular vein in the neck and up into a blood vessel in the brain. There, the electrode can measure signals from nearby brain cells on the other side of the vessel wall. The technique is borrowed from cardiologists, who slide similar tubes called stents into arteries to keep them open. The electrode-studded stent--or "stentrode"--was tested in the brains of live sheep in 2016. Like a cardiac stent, it sat in the blood vessel without causing any adverse effects. Because the metallic mesh does not directly touch brain tissue, no inflammation or scarring occurred over the six-month trial.