Wireless communication directly between brains is one step closer to reality thanks to $ 8 million in Department of Defense follow-on funding for Rice University neuroengineers.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which funded the team’s proof-of-principle study toward wireless brain connectivity in 2018, has called for a preclinical demonstration of the technology that could establish the platform for human trials as early as 2022.
“We started this at a very exploratory stage,” said Jacob Robinson of Rice, lead researcher on the MOANA Project, who hopes to eventually create a wireless headset that will be capable of both brain activity. “and” writing “to help restore lost sensory function, all without the need for surgery.
MOANA, short for “magnetic, optical and acoustic neural access,” uses light to decode cloud activity in one brain and magnetic fields to encode that activity in another brain, all in more less than one twentieth of a second.
“We spent the last year trying to see if physics works, if we could pass enough information through a skull to detect and stimulate activity in brain cells grown in basin, “said Robinson, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and a founding faculty member of the Rice Neuroengineering Initiative.
“What we have shown is that there is promise,” he said. “With the small amount of light we can collect through the skull, we were able to replicate the activity of the cells grown in the laboratory. Similarly, we showed that we could produce stem cells. stimulated in a very precise manner by magnetic fields and magnetic nanoparticles. “
Robinson, who is organizing the efforts of 16 research organizations from four states, said the second round of DARPA funding would allow the team to “develop this further into a system and demonstrate that this system can work. in true brain, starting with rodents. “
If the demonstrations are successful, he said the team could start working with human patients within two years.
“Most of the time, we’re thinking of ways we can help patients who are blind,” Robinson said. “In individuals who have lost their ability to see, scientists have shown that stimulated parts of the brain that are associated with vision can make these patients become conscious, even if their eyes are not functioning. more. “
The MOANA team includes 15 co-researchers from Rice, Baylor College of Medicine, Jan and Dan Duncan Institute of Neurological Research at Texas Children’s Hospital, Duke University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John B. Pierce Laboratory at Yale.
The project is funded through the DARPA Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) program.