Recently, Dr. ZHAN Yang’s group at Brain Cognition and Brain Disease Institute, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Dr. XUE Xinyu and ZHANG Yan, of the University of Electronic Science and Technology, developed a flexible electronic skin which can realize self-powered neural stimulation and induce neural response.  

The research entitled Self-powered, wireless-control, neural-stimulating electronic skin for in vivo characterization of synaptic plasticity is published on Nano Energy. 

Synaptic plasticity is one of the main neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory in organisms. Long-term memory requires modification of synaptic strengths between neurons. Traditionally, electrical neural-stimulating technique for characterizing synaptic plasticity requires external power source and steer-by-wire system. In this paper, a novel self-powered, wireless-control, neural-stimulating electronic skin for in vivo characterization of synaptic plasticity has been presented. 

The researchers tested it in animal models. Connecting the device to the hippocampus of the mouse brain, the e-skin can produce neural stimulating in the CA3 of mouse hippocampus. By simultaneous recording the field excitatory postsynaptic (fEPSP) potentials in the CA1, the results demonstrate that the e-skin can generate fEPSP and the fEPSP can be quantitatively measured in the mouse hippocampus. This work demonstrates that the self-powered e-skin is a great candidate for applications in quantification of neural plasticity changes and may be extended to novel multifunctional battery-free, wireless-control, neural stimulating systems. 

Fig. 1. Experimental design, device structure, material system, animal experiment, fabrication process and working mechanism of the e-skin. a) Electrical stimulation in hippocampus can evoke brain activities and synaptic changes for improving learning and memory. b,c) optical and SEM images of the e-skin. d) The animal experiment in this study. e) Fabrication process of the e-skin. f) Working mechanism of the photosensitive-triboelectric unit. (Image by Dr. ZHAN)

CONTACT:

ZHANG Xiaomin

Email: xm.zhang@siat.ac.cn

Tel: 86-755-86585299