Mosquitoes will help to put implants in human brains
Ordinary wire implants inserted in the brain, hard enough to damage our main body; but more soft materials, which scientists are now testing, on the contrary bend and enter them in the jelly-like mass of the brain is not so simple. And then came to the aid of mosquitoes.
“Until now, researchers for the most part is inserted a solid metal device in a jelly-like material of the brain, and this can cause big problems,” says Jeffrey Capadona, Professor of biomedical engineering from the University of Case Western Reserve in Cleveland. “But we believe we found the solution. And he can thank the mosquitoes”.
Similar brain microelectrodes have the potential to treat people with neurological disorders and for our understanding of the brain.
The first new technique invented by Andrew Shoffstall, he is the main author of an article published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Shoffstall were interested in how mosquitoes bite humans and other mammals.
Mosquitoes “micropile to cut the skin, widening the wound and put the trunk c by means of the guide. And I thought: why not to try also neuroimplants?”, says Shoffstall.
So scientists did. Researchers have created a prototype of the guide tool implant in the brain and printed on a 3D printer device, a small plastic disc with a hole.
Thus, scientists have borrowed from the mosquito only one process — guiding along the probe — but without the drinking and the extension of the wound.
This seems to be not too impressive instrument — even low-tech, in fact — is already helping researchers in the laboratory of the University of safely inserting a flexible probe into the brain.