An implantable brain-computer interface is a type of medical of medical device in which many tiny electrodes (each much smaller than a human hair) are implanted into the brain. Scientists and physicians would like to know: "how many electrodes can we safely implant into the human brain to help restore function?" In addition to investigating that type of system (Cortimo trial), the team at the Raphael Center for Neurorestoration also seeks to answer a complementary question: "can we build a brain-like system around electrodes?" by growing living neural tissue in glass dishes in the bench laboratory.
Scientists have been growing and sustaining pieces of living tissue in the laboratory (in glass dishes usually, hence the name 'in vitro' which means 'in glass') for nearly a century. The tissue of the nervous system (of the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves), is unique in that its job is to help an animal move through an environment and respond quickly to signals from within the body and from that environment. All neural tissue spontaneously generates its own activity. Yet when such tissue is isolated and inside a glass dish, it becomes disconnected from the inputs and outputs that would normally occur inside a living animal- including inside a person. We are building new technologies to enable pieces of neural tissue to connect to itself and to the environment. These new systems could help us learn about how the nervous system creates information. Such systems could serve as test-bed for brain-computer interface development and as novel computational systems in their own right.
