Abstract: Brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) hold promise for the restoration of motor and sensory function and the treatment of neurological disorders. Clinical BMIs have not yet been widely adopted, in part because modest channel counts have limited their potential. In this talk I will describe Neuralink’s first steps toward a scalable, high-bandwidth, clinical BMI system. We have fabricated arrays of small and flexible electrode "threads" which are inserted into the brain by a novel neurosurgical robot. Each thread can be individually inserted with micron precision for avoidance of surface vasculature and targeting specific brain regions. We have implanted arrays containing up to 3,072 electrodes packaged in small implantable devices that contain custom chips for low-power on-board amplification and digitization: the package for 3,072 channels occupies less than (23 × 18.5 × 2) mm3. A single USB-C cable provides full-bandwidth data streaming from the device, recording from all channels simultaneously. This approach to BMI has unprecedented packaging density and scalability in a clinically relevant package.

Bio: Joseph E. O'Doherty received a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University and continued his training with a postdoc at the University of California San Francisco. His research has focused on developing bidirectional brain-machine interfaces: neuroprostheses sensorized by artificial tactile and proprioceptive signals. He was a recipient of the annual BCI research award in 2013 and the Ripple promising investigator research award in 2016. Since 2017 he is at Neuralink Corp, where he is the Neuroscience team lead.

~ BME Faculty Host: Maria Dadarlat ~

***Coffee and juice will be provided at West Lafayette**