Purdue University and Argonne National Laboratory researchers have engineered a new material that can “interpret” the brain’s language. In other words, the material is a portal between electronics and the brain. The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
The quantum material (a material that has electronic properties that both can’t be explained by classical physics, and that give it a unique edge over other materials used in electronics, such as silicon) is able to automatically receive hydrogen when placed beneath an animal’s brain slice. This ability makes the material extra sensitive and extra tunable to ionic currents.
Ionic currents help the brain perform a particular reaction – reactions needed for something as basic as sending a signal to breathe. As a bonus, detecting ions means also detecting the concentration of a molecule, which serves as an indicator of the brain’s health. Therefore, this material can help a brain detect its own disease.
Hai-Tian Zhang, a Gilbreth postdoctoral fellow at Purdue’s College of Engineering and first author on the paper, said:
The goal is to bridge the gap between how electronics think, which is via electrons, and how the brain thinks, which is via ions. This material helped us find a potential bridge.
The new quantum material is a “nickelate lattice” that the scientists say could directly translate the brain’s electrochemical signals into electrical activity, which could then be interpreted by a computer. The material may make it possible to download your brain someday.
Shriram Ramanathan, a Purdue professor of materials engineering whose lab specializes in developing brain-inspired technology, said:
Imagine putting an electronic device in the brain, so that when natural brain functions start deteriorating, a person could still retrieve memories from that device. We can confidently say that this material is a potential pathway to building a computing device that would store and transfer memories.
The research is nowhere near actually downloading thoughts but it does invoke ideas like uploading brains to the cloud or hooking people up to a computer to track deep health metrics. At the moment, the researchers are testing out the materials capabilities on a basic molecular level. They have tested the material on two molecules: Glucose, a sugar essential for energy production, and dopamine, a chemical messenger that regulates movement, emotional responses and memory.
The material was able to detect the activity of these neurotransmitters. “This quantum material is about nine times more sensitive to dopamine than methods that we use currently in animal models,” said Alexander Chubykin, an assistant professor of biological sciences in the Purdue Institute for Integrative Neuroscience, based in Discovery Park.
Being able to detect dopamine levels early would mean sooner treatment of disease – for example, Parkinson’s since the brains of people with Parkinson’s disease have lower levels of dopamine. However, detecting this chemical has been notoriously difficult. The researchers hypothesized that if the tech progresses, it could be used to detect neurological diseases… or perhaps even store memories. “Imagine putting an electronic device in the brain, so that when natural brain functions start deteriorating, a person could still retrieve memories from that device,” Ramanathan said.
