Stroke Detecting Headset prototype from Samsung

Samsung’s Early Detection Sensor & Algorithm Package (EDSAP), developed by  Se-hoon Lim, is meant to detect early signs of stroke. A multiple sensor headset records electrical impulses in the brain, algorithms determine the likelihood of a stroke in one minute, and results are presented in a mobile app.  EDSAP can also analyze stress and sleep patterns, and potentially be used to monitor heart activity.  The company believes that the system can one day be built into one’s own glasses.

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Flexctrl brain, a new 32-channel BCI headset aims to speed up the development of brain technology

If you support only one BCI crowdfunding campaign this month, make it this one. Flexctrl brain is a stylish 32-channel brain-computer interface (BCI) packed with the latest technology, and will be developed by corwdfunding campaing on Indiegogo.

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Dust sized brain implants

In a potential neuroscience breakthrough, University of California Berkeley scientists have proposed a system that allows for thousands of ultra-tiny “neural dust” chips to be inserted into the brain to monitor neural signals at high resolution and communicate data highly efficiently via ultrasound.

The neural dust design promises to overcome a serious limitation of current invasive brain-machine interfaces (BMI): the lack of an implantable neural interface system that remains viable for
a lifetime. Current BMI systems are also limited to several hundred implantable recording sites, they generate tissue responses around the implanted electrodes  that degrade recording performance over time, and are limited to months to a few years.

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A Terminator-style contact-lens display

Bringing us a step closer to a Terminator-style augmented-reality display, University of Washington engineers have constructed an experimental contact lens with a single-pixel embedded light-emitting diode (LED) and tested it in a rabbit.

The LED lights up when it receives energy from a remote radio frequency transmission, picked up by an antenna around the edge and collected via a silicon power harvesting and radio integrated circuit.

Single-pixel wireless contact lens display (credit: University of Washington/Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering)

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Harvesting heat to power electronics

Thermoelectric (TE) energy harvesting is based on the heat flux through a thermoelectric element. The heat flux is driven by a temperature difference across the element. The generated voltage is proportional to the number of elements and the temperature difference.

The TE-Power Node uses any source of thermal energy to drive a wireless transceiver, storing power in a thin-film battery. The Node is a test bed for designers looking to build the next generation of sensor networks, in which the sensors power themselves by harvesting energy from the environment. The battery stores the power that trickles in from sources such as a warm industrial exhaust pipe and then releases the accumulated energy in a pulse powerful enough to operate the radio. A 10 °C difference in temperature produces enough electricity to transmit 13 bytes of information per second.

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Probing the brain wirelessly

Infrared-absorbing lead selenide particles form the basis of a method for the study of neuronal activation in samples of brain tissues without the need for hard-wired electrodes. The technique instead utilises light-triggered nanostructured semiconductor photoelectrodes to probe activity.

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Wireless activation of brain with nanoparticless emiting near infrared light

Traditionally, stimulating nerves or brain tissue involves cumbersome wiring and a sharp metal electrode. But a team of researchers at Case Western Reserve University is going "wireless."And it's a unique collaboration between chemists and neuroscientists that led to the discovery of a remarkable new way to use light to activate brain circuits with nanoparticles.


By using semiconductor nanoparticles as tiny solar cells, the scientists can excite neurons in single cells or groups of cells with infrared light. This eliminates the need for the complex wiring by embedding the light-activated nanoparticles directly into the tissue. This method allows for a more controlled reaction and closely replicates the sophisticated focal patterns created by natural stimuli.

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A new device to translate thoughts into speech

Ambient Corporation, a company based in Champaign, IL, that develops communications technologies for people with speaking disabilities, is calling its latest system "voiceless communication". The company has engineered a neckband that translates a wearer's thoughts into speech so that, without saying a word, he or she can have a cell-phone conversation or query search engines in public.

The device, called Audeo picks up the neurological signals from the brain that are being sent to the vocal cords--a person must specifically think about voicing words--and then wirelessly transmits them to a computer, which translates them into synthesized speech. At the moment, the device has a limited vocabulary: 150 words and phrases.

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Wireless Power Transmission: Tesla Revisited

In the late 19th century, Nikola Tesla, among other inventions, dreamed up wireless electric distribution. He drew up plans for a tower, about 57 meters tall, that he claimed would transmit power to kilometers away. However, he run out of funding before he could finish towers.

Then, a few years ago, Marin Soljačić, an assistant professor of physics at MIT started searching for ways to transmit power wirelessly. Instead of pursuing a long-distance scheme like Tesla's, he decided to look for midrange power transmission methods that could charge--or even power--portabl­e devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and laptops.

So far, the most effective setup consists of 60-centimeter copper coils and a 10-megahertz magnetic field; this transfers power over a distance of two meters with about 50 percent efficiency. The team is looking at silver and other materials to decrease coil size and boost efficiency. "While ideally it would be nice to have efficiencies at 100 percent, realistically, 70 to 80 percent could be possible for a typical application," says Soljačić.

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