Proceedings Article | 3 October 2022
KEYWORDS: Organic electronics, Integrated circuits, Brain, Transistors, Surgery, Polymers, Polymer thick film flex circuits, Physiology, Pathology, Neuroscience
As our understanding of the brain’s physiology and pathology progresses, increasingly sophisticated technologies are required to advance discoveries in neuroscience and develop more effective approaches to treating neuropsychiatric disease. To facilitate clinical translation of advanced materials, devices, and technologies, all components of bioelectronic devices have to be considered. Organic electronics offer a unique approach to device design, due to their mixed ionic/electronic conduction, mechanical flexibility, enhanced biocompatibility, and capability for drug delivery. We design, develop, and characterize conformable organic electronic devices based on conducting polymer-based electrodes, particulate electronic composites, high-performance transistors, conformable integrated circuits, and ion-based data communication. These devices facilitate large-scale neurophysiology experiments and have led to discovery of a novel cortical oscillation involved in memory consolidation as well as elucidated patterns of neural network maturation in the developing brain. The biocompatibility of the devices also allowed intra-operative recording from patients undergoing epilepsy and deep brain stimulation surgeries, highlighting the translational capacity of this class of neural interface devices. In parallel, we are developing the high-speed conformable implantable integrated circuits and embedded acquisition and storage systems required to make high channel count, chronic neurophysiological recording from animals and human subjects possible. This multidisciplinary approach will enable the development of new devices based on organic electronics, with broad applicability to the understanding of physiologic and pathologic network activity, control of brain-machine interfaces, and therapeutic closed-loop devices.
