This week at 10x Magnified Blog we’re focusing on innovation and emerging technologies. To kick things off, here’s an article about a carbon material called Graphene and its significant promise as a brain implant electrode to help people with motor disorders like Parkinson’s or epilepsy or offer paralyzed individuals some restoration of sensory function. This is a great example of biology & technology merging together to improve lives. Check out the TechCrunch article, Graphene Shows Promise for Brain Implants by Natasha Lomas.
Graphene is a very thin carbon material that has scientists thrilled ever since single-atom thick graphene crystallites were successfully extracted from the bulk material, signaling tremendous future potential merging electronics and biology.
“The implication of the Cambridge-Trieste research is that graphene based electrodes, could in the future, be safely implanted in the brain – offering promise for the restoration of sensory functions for amputee or paralyzed patients, for example, or help individuals with motor disorders such as epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease. So the future potential being glimpsed here is pretty exciting – albeit, theoretical and a long way out (plus it should be stressed, the successful experiments were also conducted on rat brain cultures),” reports Natasha Lomas of TechCrunch.