Scientists at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a small smart chip that can be paired with neural implants for efficient wireless transmission of brain signals.
When embedded in the brain, neural implants can alleviate symptoms of Parkinson’s disease or give paraplegic people the ability to move their prosthetic limbs. These, however, need to be connected by wires to an external device outside the body. The new NTU chip can allow the transmission of brain data wirelessly and with high accuracy.
Arindam Basu, Assistant Professor at NTU’s School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, said the research team have tested the chip on data recorded from animal models, which showed that it could decode the brain’s signal to the hand and fingers with 95% accuracy.
“What we have developed is a very versatile smart chip that can process data, analyze patterns and spot the difference,” Basu explained. “It is about a hundred times more efficient than current processing chips on the market. It will lead to more compact medical wearable devices, such as portable ECG monitoring devices and neural implants since we no longer need large batteries to power them.”
This invention and its findings were published last month in the prestigious journal, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits & Systems, by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology.