Growing electrodes in the brain is paving the path for new neurological condition treatments

Scientists in Sweden have achieved a groundbreaking breakthrough in bioelectronics. They have developed a method for creating electrodes in living tissue using the body’s molecules as triggers. The results, published in the journal Science, have the potential to revolutionize the field of bioelectronics and pave the way for the development of fully integrated electronic circuits in living organisms.

Conventional bioelectronics, developed in parallel with the semiconductor industry, have a fixed and static design that is difficult to combine with living biological signal systems. The new method developed by the Swedish researchers enables soft, substrate-free, electronically conductive materials to be created in living tissue, using a gel containing enzymes as the “assembly molecules”. The gel can be adjusted to the composition of the tissue to get the electrical process going.

The body’s endogenous molecules trigger the formation of electrodes, meaning that there is no need for genetic modification or external signals. The researchers are the first in the world to succeed in this. The method can also target the electronically conducting material to specific biological substructures, making it possible to create suitable interfaces for nerve stimulation.

In experiments conducted at Lund University, the researchers achieved electrode formation in the brain, heart, and tail fins of zebrafish and around the nervous tissue of medicinal leeches. The animals were not harmed by the injected gel and were otherwise not affected by the electrode formation. One of the many challenges in these trials was to take the animals’ immune system into account.

The breakthrough has the potential to bridge the gap between biology and technology and could be used to understand complex biological functions, combat diseases in the brain, and develop future interfaces between man and machine. The researchers believe that the method can be applied to other animals, including humans, and that it opens up completely new ways of thinking about biology and electronics. While there are still challenges to be solved, this study is an important starting point for future research in the field of bioelectronics.