Minimally-Invasive Neural Interfaces: From Physical Implants to Virtual Implants

The development of new neural technologies will revolutionize our understanding of the brain function enabling us to mitigate nervous system disorders and also advance brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). 

In this talk, I will first discuss our next generation hybrid parylene-silicon implantable optrodes for neural recording and stimulation. Benefiting from the best of both silicon and polymer material properties, these probes have greater than ten times the density and are two orders of magnitude more compliant than the state of the art, exerting minimal tissue damage and tethering forces while still providing full-volume cortical sampling. I will also introduce a novel parylene-in-parylene (PiP) photonics platform that can be monolithically integrated with our probes for high-resolution optogenetic stimulation.

I will also touch upon a recent radical complementary approach we have devised to guide and steer light in the brain for targeted optogenetic stimulation. In this method, we use non-invasive ultrasound to effectively guide and steer light without physically implanting either a waveguide or a light source. To reach brain structures >2 mm deep, we are developing tetherless upconverting nanocrystal light bulbs that absorb guided near-infrared light and emit visible light to locally stimulate opsins.