A wireless pacemaker developed for the brain could become the new standard treatment for neurological disorders as a new neurostimulator is now being developed by engineers at the UC Berkeley https://www.berkeley.edu along with researchers at Cortera Neurotechnologies, Inc., http://wwwcoteraneuro.com.
Researchers are optimistic that this type of device can become extremely effective at preventing debilitating tremors or seizures in patients with a variety of neurological conditions.
Researchers know that the electrical signatures that precede a seizure or tremor can be extremely subtle plus the fact that the frequency and strength of electrical stimulation required to prevent seizures or tremors can be equally touchy. It can take years of small adjustments by doctors working with patients before these devices are able to provide optimal treatment.
The new wireless pacemaker device named the WAND which stands for “Wireless Artifact-free Neuromodulation Device” is both wireless and autonomous. This means that once the device learns to recognize the signs of tremor or seizure, it can adjust the stimulation parameters on its own to prevent unwanted movements. Since the device is closed loop, it can stimulate and record simultaneously and then adjust parameters in real-time.
Researchers at Cortera Neurotechnologies with leadership by Rikky Muller, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley, designed the WAND custom integrated circuits capable of recording the full signal from both the subtle brain waves and from strong electrical pulses. This enables this chip design to allow WAND to subtract the signal from the electrical pulses, resulting in a clean signal from the brain waves.
The device is described in a study “A Wireless and Artefact-free 128-Channel Neuromodulation Device for Closed-Loop Stimulation and Recording in Non-Human Primates” appearing in Nature Biomedical Engineering (December 31) co-authored by Andy Zhou, Benjamin C. Johnson of UC Berkeley, Samantha Santacruz, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas in Austin https://www.natire.com/articles/s41551-018-0323-x.
Other contributing authors include George Alexandrov, Ali Moin, and Fred L. Burghardt of UC Berkeley.
The research on WAND was supported in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency https://www.darpa.mil (W911NF-14-2-0043) in support of DARPA’s SUBNETS Program, and the National Science Foundation’s https://www.nsf.gov Graduate Research Fellowship Program grant (1106400).
Authors Benjamin C. Johnson, Jan M. Rabaey, Hose M Carmena and Rikky Muller have financial interests in Crotera Neurotechnologies Inc. and have filed a patent application on the integrated circuit used in this research work.