Nerve tissue grown in a lab can be used for medical purposes, especially for testing bionic prostheses. This was told socialbites.ca by the Director of the PIMU Institute of Basic Medicine, Professor of the Department of Neurotechnologies at UNN. NI Lobachevsky Irina Mukhina.
“Now it is important to understand how to transmit signals stably between the prosthesis and the nerve. Do it safely, effectively and for a long time. It is now possible to connect 20-40 axons to the electrodes, but much more cells are involved in information processing. The more axons we can connect to the electrodes, the more bionic “The prosthesis will be so accurate. The task here is to find materials with a certain conductivity, so that they can attract and transmit the signal of a very small area – microns, not centimeters as they are now,” he explained.
In addition, experts are trying to study the transmission of signals in neuronal tissues under various pathological conditions using a laboratory mini-brain.
“So, scientists are modeling various metabolic changes at the whole brain level in vitro. It’s a common method, used as one of the ways to study the mechanism of treatment or the genesis of a disease. It’s a broad layer of work, we have a lot of scientists working here,” said Mukhina. .
Learn more about how else you can use and think the brain “in vitro”. material “socialbites.ca”.