MIT Creates Glucose Fuel Cell for Brain-to-Computer Inferfaces

The far-reaching realms of science fiction literature and film constantly puts forth a future in which wetware, computer mechanisms embedded in our bodies, will be as common as wearing a pair of glasses. And while the real-world hurdles to some of those wetware scenarios have yet to be conquered, a significant challenge regarding brain-to-computer interfaces has finally been overcome by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The breakthrough technology is a tiny implantable fuel cell chip that uses glucose to power its functions and could one day be used to drive computer-to-brain interfaces. What makes the chip so groundbreaking is that, like semiconductor electronic chips, the fuel cell chip is made from silicon.

According to the research group's paper, the chip's semiconductor fabrication makes it a good match for production processes with integrated circuits on a single silicon wafer. The research finding was published in this week's PLoS ONE peer-reviewed scientific and medical journal. Such computer-to-brain interfaces could be used to operate robotic limbs or even aid those suffering from spinal cord injuries.

Also, because the chip is such a low-power, bio-electronic device, the group believes that it would have little impact on the brain's normal functions. "A holy grail of bioelectronics is to engineer biologically implantable systems that can be embedded without disturbing their local environments while harvesting from their surroundings all of the power they require," the paper said. "Here we discuss how to construct an implantable glucose fuel cell suitable for such applications."

At this point the findings are still in the early stages and have yet to be tested on a living animal, but the implications for a possible future in which computer systems become an integral part of human physiology are exciting. The research team was led by Rahul Sarpeshkar, who recently delivered a presentation at Google's Mountain View campus on the topic of ultra low power biomedical and bio-inspired systems.