Newswise — The Federal Drug Administration approved a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of an electronic grid that records brain activity during surgery, developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego. The device with nanoscale sensors records electrical signals directly from the surface of the human brain in record-breaking detail. The grid’s breakthrough resolution could provide better guidance for planning and performing surgeries to remove brain tumors and treat drug-resistant epilepsy.
The grid’s higher resolution for recording brain signals could improve neurosurgeons’ ability to minimize damage to healthy brain tissue. During epilepsy surgery, the novel grid could improve the ability to precisely identify the regions of the brain where epileptic seizures originate for safe and effective treatment. The new brain sensor array, known as platinum nanorod grid (PtNRGrid) features a densely packed grid of a record-breaking 1,024 embedded electrocorticography (ECoG) sensors.
The device rests on the surface of the brain and is approximately 6 microns thin–smaller than one tenth of the human hair–and flexible. As a result, it can both adhere and conform to the surface of the brain, bending as the brain moves while providing high-quality, high-resolution recordings of brain activity. In contrast, the ECoG grids most commonly used in surgeries today typically have between 16 and 64 sensors.
These grids are rigid, stiffer and more than 0.5 mm i.