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Visual Neuro Prosthetics
Recent technological breakthroughs in materials and
micro fabrication technologies afford neurosurgeons ophthalmologists and
engineers the opportunity to reconsider the prospect of providing a useful
visual sense to the profoundly blind. This will be accomplished by
electrically stimulating their visual systems via an array of implanted
electrodes, which can be safely implanted into the visual parts of the
brain with little significant long term consequences.
Preliminary experiments have provided blind volunteers
with rudimentary visual sensations.
Neural cells possess sensitive electrochemical transduction capabilities
that could be useful in constructing cell-based biosensors. Previous
studies on the neuron-electronics interface emphasize the importance of a
tight coupling in optimizing signal recording. In the present study, the
intention was to improve the neuron-electronic interface coupling by
mimicking the cell-substratum interactions found in v attachment-promoting
laminin subdomains in the extracellular matrix were utilized to enhance
cell-electrode coupling. They were immobilized on gold substrates, and
their presence was verified.
They were immobilized on gold substrates, and their
presence was verified with surface analysis A significant increase in
neural cell attachment efficacy was observed on peptide-modified
substrates as compared to the unmodified ones. In this communication, we
report results obtained with a biochip prototype that was constructed wit
attachment-promoting peptides on the microelectrodes. Strong signals were
obtained. The results of this study would be useful in the development of
biological neural networks and bio electronic device
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