BCOE Seminar - Professor Sakhrat Khizroev

Flyer: Enabling Wireless Brain-Machine Interface With MangetoElectric NanoPartivles and Understanding the Brain

Abstract: The presentation will give an overview of our research to launch wireless brain-machine interface (BMI) applications of MagnetoElectric NanoParticles (MENPs), which was for the first time proposed through our collaboration with Prof. Ping Liang at UCR in 2010. Due to the magnetoelectric effect, unlike other nanoparticles, MENPs allow to use magnetic fields to wirelessly induce local electric fields, thus wirelessly and non-invasively or minutely invasively modulating neural activity deep in the brain. Conversely, local electric fields due to neural activity in the vicinity of MENPs can change the nanoparticles’ magnetization; in turn, this magnetization change can be detected using magnetometers. As a result, MENPs can offer non-surgical solutions to monitor in real time cellular activity such as the brain’s electric circuitry and, if necessary, restore its malfunctions by targeted neuromodulation, ideally, at the single-neuron level, without using physical electrodes. The potential implications of this research are two-fold. First, MENPs allow to conduct research that can help us understand the computing architecture of the brain and deepen our understanding of human intelligence, also elevating artificial intelligence (AI) to the next level. Second, MENPs unlock the possibility of pinpoint treatment of neurological diseases. Several game-changing applications emerged from this technology will be presented and discussed.