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posted by martyb on Saturday June 13 2020, @07:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-foil-cap-for-you! dept.

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)


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:16AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:16AM (#1007358)

    Any thought or reasoning that could be stimulated would be an improvement.

    Why doesn't martyb just fire the stupid son of a bitch?

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:32AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:32AM (#1007362)
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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @10:42AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @10:42AM (#1007399)
    Pathetic attempts to infiltrate #GNAA official IRC channel on EFNET on Monday ended abruptly when the perpetrators were owned by EFNET's CHANFIX service and control returned to the official GNAA owners. The channel is temporarily +i to avoid any other lamers from attempting to take over while GNAA is regrouping.

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  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @10:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @10:58AM (#1007404)
    Pathetic attempts to infiltrate #GNAA official IRC channel on EFNET on Monday ended abruptly when the perpetrators were owned by EFNET's CHANFIX service and control returned to the official GNAA owners. The channel is temporarily +i to avoid any other lamers from attempting to take over while GNAA is regrouping.

    This has been a public service announcement from GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA).
    And now we return to our usual broadcast...

    GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

    Are you GAY [klerck.org]?
    Are you a NIGGER [mugshots.org]?
    Are you a GAY NIGGER [gay-sex-access.com]?

    If you answered "Yes" to any of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
    Join GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member.
    GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the fastest-growing GAY NIGGER community with THOUSANDS of members all over United States of America. You, too, can be a part of GNAA if you join today!

    Why not? It's quick and easy - only 3 simple steps!

    First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY NIGGERS FROM OUTER SPACE THE MOVIE [imdb.com] and watch it.

    Second, you need to succeed in posting a GNAA "first post" on SoylentNews [soylentnews.org], a popular "news for trolls" website

    Third, you need to join the official GNAA irc channel #GNAA on EFNet, and apply for membership.
    Talk to one of the ops or any of the other members in the channel to sign up today!

    If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is EFNet, and you can connect to irc.prison.net or irc.colosolutions.net as one of the EFNet servers.
    If you do not have an IRC client handy, you are free to use the GNAA Java IRC client by clicking here [nero-online.org].

    If you have mod points and would like to support GNAA, please moderate this post up.

    This post proudly brought to you by the GNAA president

    ________________________________________________
    | ______________________________________._a,____ |
    | _______a_._______a_______aj#0s_____aWY!400.___ |
    | __ad#7!!*P____a.d#0a____#!-_#0i___.#!__W#0#___ |
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    | _________#1__________?________________________ |
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    ` _______________________________________________'

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:28PM (3 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:28PM (#1007422)

    A major concern for people who need brain implants is compatibility with common medical brain scanning machines.

    --
    🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday June 13 2020, @04:48PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Saturday June 13 2020, @04:48PM (#1007474)

      That was my first thought. Everything's looking good...except there seems to be some severe charring rapidly spreading through your frontal cortex.

    • (Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:29PM (1 child)

      by istartedi (123) on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:29PM (#1007488) Journal

      TFA says the material vibrates in a magnetic field, which is fascinating. I didn't think you could transmit energy just by having a magnetic field--I thought it had to be a time varying field. It doesn't say if the vibration increases indefinitely with the intensity of the field. If it saturates at some point, the MRI might not be a problem at all. I'm sure they'll test it in the lab, and if it's not MRI compatible they'll weigh the benefits of the implant against that.

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:51PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday June 13 2020, @05:51PM (#1007493)

        the MRI might not be a problem at all

        The fun thing about MRIs isn't just the raw field strength, it's also the dynamic gradients and the high energy RF pulses. Any implant with "lead wires" tends to have serious concerns about the RF fields. Even iron bearing tattoos can heat up to painful (rarely injurious) levels.

        --
        🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:33PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday June 13 2020, @12:33PM (#1007426)

    The rodents preferred to be in portions of the enclosures where a magnetic field activated the stimulator and provided a small voltage to the reward center of their brains.

    Louis Gridley Wu, please pickup a white courtesy phone [wikipedia.org].

    --
    🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
  • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:16PM (1 child)

    by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Saturday June 13 2020, @08:16PM (#1007535) Journal

    What do they mean by magnetoelectric? Isn’t that at best some special case of electromagnetism? So why all the hype? Why not just tell us what the electromagnetic parameters are: operating frequency, and distance from transmitter to receiver (i.e. near or far field). I mean we are talking about power transmission here, not a communications link, so it should be relatively easy to describe in ordinary science and engineering terminology.

    Or is that not glamorous enough? Or it’s going to be a trade secret?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @05:19AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 14 2020, @05:19AM (#1007674)

      From Wikipedia:

      In its most general form, the magnetoelectric effect (ME) denotes any coupling between the magnetic and the electric properties of a material.[1][2] The first example of such an effect was described by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1888, who found that a dielectric material moving through an electric field would become magnetized.[3] A material where such a coupling is intrinsically present is called a magnetoelectric.

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