Abstract

Neurological conditions affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide, costing over $3 trillion per year, with half due to healthcare expenses. In Europe, these costs equal those of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes combined. Drug treatments are effective for only a few neurological conditions, due to the challenge of crossing the blood-brain barrier and the complexity of disease mechanisms. This leads to fewer successful drugs, rising costs, and declining investment by pharmaceutical companies. Existing medicines are often untargeted and cause undesirable side effects. Neurotechnology, enabled by advanced electronics, offers a promising alternative, with devices like cochlear implants and deep brain stimulators paving the way for new bioelectronic therapies. However, bringing these technologies to market is costly and complicated by regulatory and economic challenges. To succeed therefore, the neurotechnology ecosystem must consider economic, workflow and regulatory constraints in addition to the clinical need, scientific validity and technical. This keynote will explore how neurotechnology can leverage the semiconductor ecosystem to achieve scalability and bring benefit to more people. Integrated circuits improve power efficiency, performance, and capability, while microsystems technology enables further integration and miniaturization, streamlining clinical workflows toward minimally invasive surgery. By utilizing semiconductor manufacturing, supply chains, and design tools, the development of neural implants can become more economically viable. The talk will highlight recent advances, from our work and others, in the semiconductor neurotechnology stack including neural interface design re-use, chip-scale neural implants and implantable research platforms. With active human studies involving implantable devices for over 60 neurological conditions, the potential for innovation is greater than ever. Implantable neurotechnology is undoubtably on a trajectory to become mainstream, and we will soon see a shift from it being a last-resort option to an elective treatment at earlier stages of disease.

Abstract

Several of brain diseases remain unknown or ununderstood, some of these known diseases can’t be solved by regular clinical treatment. Consequently, wearable and implantable medical devices such as microsystems based closed-loop neuromodulators offer potential solutions. Built around neuromorphic brain-machine interfaces, these devices allow to diagnosis, treat, and predict some of these neurodegenerative diseases. This talk covers end-to-end brain-microsystem interfaces dealing with multidimensional design and implementation challenges such as massively parallel neurorecording sites, various biosensing methods, energy harvesting, power management, very low-power circuits, high-data rate transceivers, small silicon area, large memory room, artificial intelligence algorithms intended for various biomarkers detection, electrical/optical stimulations, etc. Case studies include neurotransmitters detection, neural cells and organoids culture and manipulation, On set detection/prediction of epileptic seizures and Alzheimer, addictions suppression, and vision enhancement.

Abstract

Intracranial BCI can assist severely disabled persons in assistive communication and active rehabilitation. Nevertheless, sustainable BCI implants require minimal invasiveness. We developed a miniaturized epidual BCI implant with only 8 electrodes (NEO system). The 25mm-diameter device can be fitted in the skull, with no battery included. Power was supplied remotely through inductive antenna, and the epidual ECoG were transmitted wirelessly to the receiver attached outside the scalp. The NEO system was tested on white pigs, showing its capacity of stable long-term recording of epidual ECoG, while keeping cortical cells intact. With ensured minimal invasiveness and long-term safety, the first-in-human trial of clinical implantation was made on October 24th, 2023, and the second on December 19th, 2023 respectively. The first tetraplegia patient with spinal cord injury regained the ability of grasping objects, and even drinking water with help of the BCI. Additionally, the patient showed substantial neurological recovery through consecutive BCI upper limb training, regaining the ability to hold objects without BCI assistance. The patient demonstrated a 5-point improvement in ISNCSCI upper limb motor scores and a 27-point increase in the Action Research Arm Test (ARAT). Improvements in electrophysiological assessments point to a considerable recovery in impaired neural circuits. The second BCI-implant patient can control a computer cursor to play games and maneuver a wheelchair just by motor imagery. Both patients have been using the NEO BCI at their home for over 8 months.