SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Rice team makes tiny, magnetically powered neural stimulator (SD)

Rice University neuroengineers have created a tiny surgical implant that can electrically stimulate the brain and nervous system without using a battery or wired power supply.

The neural stimulator draws its power from magnetic energy and is about the size of a grain of rice. It is the first magnetically powered neural stimulator that produces the same kind of high-frequency signals as clinically approved, battery-powered implants that are used to treat epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, chronic pain and other conditions.

[...] The implant's key ingredient is a thin film of "magnetoelectric" material that converts magnetic energy directly into an electrical voltage. The method avoids the drawbacks of radio waves, ultrasound, light and even magnetic coils, all of which have been proposed for powering tiny wireless implants and have been shown to suffer from interference with living tissue or produce harmful amounts of heat.

Magnetoelectric Materials for Miniature, Wireless Neural Stimulation at Therapeutic Frequencies (DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.05.019) (DX)

Original Submission