Browsing by Author "Yip, Victor"

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    Minimally invasive reliable implantation of ultra-flexible electrodes for non-human primates
    (2023-11-28) Yip, Victor; Xie, Chong
    Ultra-flexible nanoelectric threads (NETs) have been successful in recording neural data in high densities in the cortical and sub-cortical regions, while avoiding post-surgery complications such as foreign-body responses or additional glial scarring from motion when compared to rigid electrodes. Studying sub-cortical brain function is important to understand lower-level brain activity and is mostly exclusive to microelectrodes that can be positioned close to the neurons of interest. To deliver the NET into the brain, a stiff shuttle is used to penetrate the brain tissue. The current T-shaped needle-and-thread shuttle has been successful for transdural implantation in rodents but struggles to scale to larger models. In this thesis, we intend to demonstrate the following: (1) The hook shuttle can be fabricated and successfully and reliably delivers NETs into the brain in rodent models. (2) The hook shuttle performs better than the T-shape shuttle by decreasing the required insertion force. (3) A cannula can be fabricated to help a shuttle deliver NETs into a non-human primate brain by reducing the required insertion force, demonstrated with parafilm and agarose gel phantoms.