In 2004, Andrzej Geim and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester in England made the breakthrough when graphene isolated for the first time. Graphene, a flat form of carbon made of a single layer of atoms, is the thinnest known material and one of the strongest. Hailed as miraculous material, it won the Geim and Novoselov Award Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.
Twenty years later, graphene is finally finding its way into batteries, sensors, semiconductors, air conditioners and even headphones. And now it’s being tested on human brains.
This morning, surgeons at the University of Manchester temporarily placed a skinny, adhesive tape-like implant made of graphene into the patient’s cortex, the outermost layer of the brain. This technology, created by the Spanish company InBrain Neuroelectronics, is a type of brain-computer interface, i.e. a device that collects and decodes brain signals. InBrain is one of several companies, including Elon Musk’s Neuralink, developing BCI.
“Our goal is to create a commercial product that can decode and map the brain and can be used to treat a variety of conditions,” says Carolina Aguilar, CEO and co-founder of InBrain.
Brain mapping is a technique used in planning brain surgery. For example, when removing a brain tumor, surgeons place electrodes in the brain to determine the location of motor and speech functions in the brain so that they can safely remove the tumor without affecting the patient’s ability to move and speak.
During today’s surgery, the implant was installed for 79 minutes. The patient was already undergoing brain surgery to remove the tumor and consented to the experiment. During this time, scientists observed that the InBrain device was able to distinguish between hearty and cancerous brain tissue with precision on the micrometer scale.
The first-in-human InBrain study is being conducted at the University of Manchester, in which the graphene device will be tested in up to 10 patients who are already undergoing brain surgery for other reasons. The aim of the study, which is financed by the European Commission Graphene flagship project, aims to demonstrate the safety of graphene in direct contact with the human brain.
David Coope, the neurosurgeon who performed the procedure, claims that the InBrain device is more malleable than a conventional electrode, so it adapts better to the surface of the brain. “From a surgical standpoint, it means we can probably put it in places where it would be difficult to put an electrode,” he says. The primary electrodes used for brain mapping are platinum-iridium disks embedded in silicon. “So they’re quite stiff,” Coope says.
The InBrain device, on the other hand, is a clear sheet placed on the surface of the brain. It is half the thickness of a human hair and contains 48 miniature decoding graphene electrodes, each just 25 micrometers in diameter. The company is developing a second type of implant that penetrates brain tissue and can provide precise electrical stimulation.
The surface device itself can be used to map the brain, but Aguilar says the company is also integrating both devices and plans to eventually test them together to treat neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.