Abstract
In recent years, electroceuticals have been spotlighted as an emerging treatment for various severe chronic brain diseases, owing to their intrinsic advantage of electrical interaction with the brain, which is the most electrically active organ. However, the majority of research has verified only the short-term efficacy through acute studies in laboratory tests owing to the lack of a reliable miniaturized platform for long-term animal studies. The construction of a sufficient integrated system for such a platform is extremely difficult because it requires multi-disciplinary work using state-of-the-art technologies in a wide range of fields. In this study, we propose a complete system of an implantable platform for long-term preclinical brain studies. Our proposed system, the extra-cranial brain activator (ECBA), consists of a titanium-packaged implantable module and a helmet-type base station that powers the module wirelessly. The ECBA can also be controlled by a remote handheld device. Using the ECBA, we performed a long-term non-anesthetic study with multiple canine subjects, and the resulting PET-CT scans demonstrated remarkable enhancement in brain activity relating to memory and sensory skills. Furthermore, the histological analysis and high-temperature aging test confirmed the reliability of the system for up to 31 months. Hence, the proposed ECBA system is expected to lead a new paradigm of human neuromodulation studies in the near future.
Highlights
E LECTROCEUTICALS have been accepted as one of the most distinct approaches for treating various chronic brain diseases [1]–[5]
The deep brain stimulator (DBS) module consists of two parts: a long wired electrode array and a palm-sized stimulator body, but these are implanted in the head and clavicle separately owing to the volume limitation
We presented a new platform known as the Extra-Cranial Brain Activator (ECBA), which is designed for long-term non-anesthetic preclinical studies with canine subjects, as illustrated in Figs. 1 and 2(a)
Summary
E LECTROCEUTICALS have been accepted as one of the most distinct approaches for treating various chronic brain diseases [1]–[5]. The charge intensity to the target neuron was 57 times higher than that of transcutaneous direct current stimulation methods [19] This approach exhibited explicit limitations for long-term studies. To connect these components to the main module, feedthroughs [20] with one or two ports were applied, which provided hermetic sealing, and the connection between the circuit and electrodes Both the NFC and WPRX used the 13.56MHz band so that they shared a loop antenna.
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