A Pacemaker for Your Brain From: American Friends of Tel Aviv University - 06/28/2010 An international research team is developing a chip that could enable doctors to precisely control deep brain stimulation, and thus rehabilitate people with brain injury and disease. The team's methodology is to implant electrodes in diseased or injured areas of the brain to record and analyze the activity, and then develop algorithms to simulate healthy neuronal activity. The algorithms would be programmed into a chip, called the Rehabilitation Nano Chip (ReNaChip), which would be connected to tiny electrodes that are implanted in the brain. The ReNaChip could be etched onto the electrodes themselves as they become smaller, but the electrodes would only be inserted into the brain for therapeutic purposes. Further miniaturization of the deep brain electrodes would enable the team to add more sensors. "The chip itself can be implanted just under the skin, like pacemakers for the heart, ensuring that the brain is stimulated only when it needs to be," says Tel Aviv University professor Matti Mintz. The platform would be flexible enough to provide a basis for different clinical experiments and to be used in tools programmed for specific disorders. Read the entire article at: http://www.aftau.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12445 Links: Rehabilitation of a Cerebellar Function by a Biomimetic Silicon Chip http://www.bio-ict.org/index.php/projects/renachip Rehabilitation of a discrete motor learning function by a prosthetic chip http://www.renachip.org/Default.aspx