Now you do not need to be Arnold Schwartznegger to become the mighty Terminator! Researchers from the colleges of Linköping, Lund, and Gothenburg have created an innovative gel that enables the creation of electrodes in living things without the need for implants.
Leeches used as medicine and zebrafish were the research animals for the experiment. Electrodes are then injected into the fish’s brain, heart, and flukes, as well as all around a significant amount of neural tissue, after the gel has been injected.
The challenge of inserting pre-made chips into biological tissue is one of the issues that developers of various kinds of brain implants face. The use of biological elements and the direct growth of an electrode grid within cells are an alternative method and the ability to create human-machine hybrids will likely result from this. Researchers were able to create electrodes that are accepted by brain tissue and the immune system through making specific modifications to the chemical composition of the material.
Magnus Berggren, one of the authours, explains that the new invention allows you to actually grow electronics. And, most importantly, the organism itself is unaffected from this. Authors emphasize that humans have been working on creating devices that resemble biology for many years and we are now letting biology mold technology for us.
And it definitely seems like it, as we might enter a next level of mankind’s evolution, now beginning to integrate complicated circuitry directly into bodies. One of the possible use cases for it may be brain’s capabilities extension. Even though neurotech has been appearing in the media more often, especially with the help of Elon Musk’s Neurolink, we don’t see this topic getting as viral as its possible impact on the mankind.
Personally, it would be interesting to see if neurotech could be potentially combined with, for example, AR, connecting it directly to retina without the need to wear a headset. However, most likely, building integrated circuits in the human body will have a big effect on how neurological disorders are treated in the future.
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