There are more than 3.4 million adults and children in the U.S with epilepsy and about one million experience seizures uncontrolled by medicine.
NIH https://www.nih.gov has awarded NYU Langone Health https://nyulangone.org a $8 million grant to develop a state-of-the-art implantable monitoring device to study epilepsy.
By developing the implantable device, researchers will be able to collect previously unobtainable data on how the brain behaves moments before and during a seizure. The funding for the development and clinical research will be shared with NYU’s Center for Neural Science, Duke University, University of Utah, and Blackrock Neurotech https://blackrockneurotech.com.
Blackrock Neurotech, recently received FDA’s Breakthrough Device Designation for an innovative, first-of-its-king system that will help immobile patients have the ability to control a variety of prosthetic devices and computing tools, including mouse cursors, keyboards, and mobile devices simply by thinking.
Daniel Friedman, MD, Co-Director of the EEG Laboratory at NYU Langone’s Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and a Professor in the Department of Neurology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine said, “We now have the opportunity to build a new ultrathin implantable device that can have thousands of measurement contacts instead of dozens.
According to Jonathan Viventi, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke, the implant uses a flexible liquid crystal polymer thermoplastic materials that seals around a network of circuits connecting hundreds to thousands of electrodes.
Prototypes were tested intraoperatively for 30 minutes in dozens of patients at both Duke and NYU Langone. A new version of the device for clinical use that can be implanted for up to 30 days will now be developed by Duke, the University of Utah, and Blackrock Neurotech.
Dr. Viventi explained, “Our new state-of-the-art monitoring device will enable high density sampling of microsignals from large areas of the brain. With this tool we will be able to capture a high definition picture of heat is really happening in the brain moments before epileptic seizures.”
According to the researchers, effective use of neurotechnology that can monitor as well as stimulate the brain, may enable scientists to develop new treatments for comorbidities related to diseases we still do not fully understand.