Ultimately the methods pioneered by Lieber and his colleagues could lead to new ways to treat neurodegenerative diseases and paralysis, as well as mapping out the brain in greater detail than ever before.The team brought together by Lieber is made up of internationally renowned physicists, neuroscientists and chemists, and he thinks the technique could make a huge difference in the future.
Once injected, the miniature scaffolding is able to unfurl itself and melds with the existing brain tissue - the neurons apparently look at the new
mesh as a friendly support rather than something alien to the body.
From there, individual neurons can be both monitored and stimulated through a small connection to the brain.
The group of scientists Lieber has brought together are trying to solve a long-standing neuroscience mystery: exactly how the activity of individual brain cells lead to larger cognitive powers.
Because the new mesh is 95 percent free space, and made of very soft and flexible silk, the brain tissue is able to comfortably rearrange itself around it.
"I think it's great, a very creative new approach to the problem of recording from large number of neurons in the brain," Rafael Yuste, director of the Neurotechnology Centre at Columbia University in New York, told Nature.com.
source: source 1, source 2
