Neural Prosthetics: New Hope for Medically Disabled

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Among the marvels of modern medicine are neural prosthetics, tiny bio-engineered devices that surgeons implant in brain tissue to compensate for a variety of disabilities to the human nervous system. Physicians already have had much success with cochlear implants for the hearing impaired, with future research programs aimed at assisting epileptics, victims of Alzheimer's disease, and even individuals who have sustained spinal cord injury and loss of limbs.

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Neuroprosthetics is a discipline related to neuroscience and biomedical engineering concerned with developing neural prostheses. Neural prostheses are a series of devices that can substitute a motor, sensory or cognitive modality that might have been damaged as a result of an injury or a disease. Cochlear implants provide an example of such devices. Neural implants are designed to be as small as possible in order to be to minimally invasive, particularly in areas surrounding the brain, eyes or cochlea. These implants typically communicate with their prosthetic counterparts wirelessly. Additionally, power is currently received through wireless power transmission through the skin.

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Neuroscientists see a vast horizon for these micro implants, which are able to read electrical and chemical signals from the nervous system to stimulate sensory function lost through disease or injury. What the amazing devices do is avoid the damaged neural lines of communication in the body to restore function. In the case of the cochlear prosthetics, for example, sounds gathered from a tiny microphone are converted to electrical signals and used to stimulate the auditory nerve of deaf patients.

Neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, materials scientists, and mechanical engineers are all collaborating on the research and development of neural prosthetics, which each year receive $6.5 million in funding at the National Institutes of Health.

Engineers play a significant role in the interdisciplinary research and development of neural prosthetics. Engineers will be called on to make innovative use of materials to design and fabricate devices that allow sustained electronic functioning in the environment of the human body, without causing tissue infection or other serious conditions. Research efforts have focused on technologies that enable the micro devices to be safely implanted in human tissue for long periods. Sarah Felix, a research engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), is making gains with thin-film flexible polymer materials that allow devices to conform to the live tissue in which they are implanted.

Lawrence Livermore is currently developing neural implants that are able to restore auditory, motor and bladder function, aid speech, and control depression and epilepsy. Future programs at the lab include experimentation with deep brain and spinal cord simulation, which will enable physicians to advance neural prosthetics to the next level of human health and rehabilitation.

Promising clinical studies are underway at some of the most prestigious medical research centers in the U.S. as the scientific community continues to advance neural prosthetics to help disabled persons achieve quality of life. Indeed, neural prosthetics will be an intriguing pathway of multidisciplinary scientific and engineering development for years to come.

Attribution/Source(s):

This quality-reviewed article relating to our Medical Research News section was selected for publishing by the editors of Disabled World due to its likely interest to our disability community readers. Though the content may have been edited for style, clarity, or length, the article "Neural Prosthetics: New Hope for Medically Disabled" was originally written by American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and published by Disabled-World.com on 2014-03-23 (Updated: 2021-08-19). Should you require further information or clarification, American Society of Mechanical Engineers can be contacted at asme.org. Disabled World makes no warranties or representations in connection therewith.

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