Nature Electronics | Flexible kirigami microelectrode arrays for neuronal activity recordings in non-human primate brains | Ying Fang Lab
Abstract
The development of brain–computer interfaces requires implantable microelectrode arrays that can interface with numerous neurons across large spatial and temporal scales. However, creating arrays that can effectively accommodate the substantial movements and deformations of primate brains remains challenging. Here we report a kirigami-inspired flexible microelectrode array that has a reconfigurable spiral thread design and can be used for large-scale, long-term neuronal activity recordings in the primate brain. Each array can be transferred onto a hydrogel-coated brain surface using a water-dissolvable carrier, providing high-throughput delivery of multiple spiral threads across a large brain area. Stretchable spiral threads can be implanted into the cerebral cortex, with their base floating conformally on the brain surface to accommodate the large movements of the primate brain inside the skull. We show that the implanted array can provide simultaneous activity recordings from over 700 cortical neurons in a macaque monkey brain. We also demonstrate the accurate decoding of upper-limb kinematics from the spiking activity of the primary motor cortex (M1) neurons with a recurrent neural network model.
