Your brain on a microchip – Cool research from U of Calgary

Professor Naweed Syed, head of University of Calgary’s department of cell biology and anatomy, talks about his latest cutting edge “neurochip” research in the following YouTube video. Have a look of my previous entry for references to two newspaper articles about the research.

After watching Prof. Syed talks about the “neurochip” (polymer microchip capable of monitoring neuronal activity with high-fidelity) in the video, I think I have much better appreciation of what this research has achieved. This is really impressive stuff. [HT UofCMedicine tweets]

List of approximate time codes:

0:39 Record activity in day 1, put it back into incubator, then record again in day 2, etc.

0:54 Ability to look for longer term effects

1:22 brain cells when they fire, they have a very unique firing frequency

1:45 block pain before it gets to your brain

2:20 re epilepsy …

2:35 What an amazing first inch in conquering the brain !

P.S. The video is really nice since it provides a nice way to understand the various implications without jumping real deep into the technical research paper “High-fidelity patch-clamp recordings from neurons cultured on a polymer microchip“.

Aug 12, 2010 Update: Here is a clip of Dr. Syed interviewed on Discovery Channel posted in Oct 2009,

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