Researchers are developing microelectronic circuitry to guide the growth of axons in a brain damaged by an exploding bomb, car crash, or stroke. The goal is to rewire the brain connectivity and bypass the region damaged by trauma, in order to restore normal behavior and movement.

Professors Pedram Mohseni and Randolph J. Nudo believe repeated communications between distant neurons in the weeks after injury may spark long-reaching axons to form and connect. Mohseni has been building a multichannel microelectronic device to bypass the gap left by injury. The device, which he calls a brain-machine-brain interface, includes a microchip on a circuit board. The microchip amplifies signals, called neural action potentials, which are produced by the neurons in one part of the brain. The chip uses an algorithm to separate these signals - brain spike activity - from noise and other artifacts. Upon spike discrimination, the microchip sends a current pulse to stimulate neurons in another part of the brain, artificially connecting the two brain regions. The miniature device currently remains outside the body, connecting to microelectrodes implanted in two regions of the brain.

During the next four years, the researchers expect to understand the ability to rewire the brain in a rat model and to determine whether the technology is safe enough to test in non-human primates. If tests show the treatment is successful in helping recovery from traumatic brain injury, the researchers foresee the possibility of using the approach in patients within the next ten years.

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