Flexible electronic membranes help brain injury research
A team of engineers at Princeton University, Columbia University and the University of Cambridge have developed flexible electronic membranes that feature microelectrodes that are able to withstand the sudden stretching that is used to simulate severe head trauma. The development will help brain researchers to overcome the long-lasting dilemma of how to replicate injuries in the lab without destroying the electrodes that monitor how brain cells respond to physical trauma. The advance could allow far more refined studies of brain injury than previously possible and may lead to superior healing in the minutes and hours immediately following the injury. Present techniques to study shocking brain injury have been inadequate because it is almost impossible to insert an electrode into a cell to find a recording, remove the probe, injure the cell, and then reinsert the probe into the same cell, Morrison said. Because of this drawback, researchers rely on other replacement markers of injury, such as cell death. "In terms of traumatic brain injury, there can be a lot of functional damage to the brain in other ways than just killing a cell," Morrison said. "Neurons can still be alive, but not properly firing," which leads to problems ranging from comas to epilepsy.
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