Research progress in brain neuroregulation and reading technology

Recently, the team of Ying Fang, a researcher at the National Nanoscience Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has made new progress in high-precision neural regulation and reading technology
.

The core goal of brain science is to analyze how neural electrical activities control brain functions and the neural mechanisms of brain diseases
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To achieve these goals, it is necessary to precisely regulate and read the electrical activity information of specific neural circuits
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Among them, the combined technology of optogenetic and multi-channel electrophysiological recording can realize high-time resolution regulation and reading of neuronal electrical activity, which is of great significance in the analysis of neural function loops and the study of brain disease mechanisms
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However, in the traditional method, there is one to two orders of magnitude difference between the optical stimulation range and the electrode recording range, which leads to the fuzzy attribution of neuron electrical activity functions, which brings difficulties and challenges to the high-precision analysis of neural circuits
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The research team has long been committed to the development of new brain neural information analysis technology and its application in the field of brain function analysis and brain-computer interface
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In the early stage, the team used micro-nano processing technology and biocompatible nanomaterials to develop a series of new flexible nerve electrode technologies, including injectable flexible nerve electrodes (Nature Nanotechnology, 2015, 10, 629), based on graphene and carbon nano Tube flexible all-carbon nerve electrodes (Nano Letters, 2017, 17, 71), and high-density flexible nerve tassel electrodes (Science Advances, 2019, 5, eaav2842), etc.
, provide important tools for long-term stable reading of brain neuroelectric activity
.

Based on previous research, researchers have recently constructed a multifunctional flexible neural electrode technology, which simultaneously realizes precise delivery of gene carriers in the brain, long-term optogenetic regulation, and neuroelectrophysiological recording
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Using the principle of elastic capillary self-assembly, the researchers self-assembled high-throughput flexible nerve electrodes and light guide elements in a polymer liquid containing optogenetic gene carriers to obtain a multifunctional flexible nerve electrode with a volume of only nanoscale
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Studies have found that the multifunctional flexible nerve electrode can achieve efficient delivery and expression of gene carriers at the electrode-nerve interface
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Based on this, the researchers used multifunctional flexible nerve electrodes to accurately express optogenetic proteins within 100 microns of the electrode-nerve interface, thereby ensuring the high spatial consistency of optogenetic regulation neuron clusters and electrophysiological recording neuron clusters
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Further using the good biocompatibility of the flexible nerve electrode, the stable reading and regulation of the electrical activity of brain neurons for more than three months is realized
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 　　The research results have important application prospects in the fields of precise analysis of neural circuits and brain-computer interfaces
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This research was awarded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Leading Science and Technology Special (Class B) "Brain Cognition and Brain-like Frontier Research", the National Natural Science Foundation of China's major project "Neuroanalytical Chemistry Fundamental Research on Parkinson’s Syndrome" and the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( Region) Supported by the cooperative exchange project "Ultra-thin flexible neural electrodes used in the coding mechanism of ancient brains"
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Figure 1 (a) Self-assembly schematic diagram of multifunctional flexible nerve electrode (b) Precise delivery of gene carriers in the brain Figure 2 (a) Flexible nerve electrode (b) Multifunctional flexible nerve electrode (c) Precision gene of electrode-neural interface Delivery and expression (d) Synchronous neural reading and regulation in the brain (e) Schematic diagram of precise neural reading and regulation Source: National Center for Nanoscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences