In recent years, scientists have been developing new and creative ways to put electronics in the brain. These devices are useful for paralyzed patients to control prosthetic limbs with their minds, to help locked-in patients communicate with the outside world, or to help researchers better predict seizures in epileptic patients. But implanting them requires opening the skull, an intrusive procedure. Now researchers from the University of Melbourne have created a device that can be inserted into the brain through the blood vessels, no invasive surgery required. The study was published this week in Nature Biotechnology.
A team of Australian Scientists from the University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales, along with their counterparts at Purdue University, Indiana, have created a silicon wire just four atoms wide and one atom tall. The wire, which has the same capabilities as modern copper wires, could revolutionise engineering, computing and electrical physics.
