Active neural interface system for stroke cavities treatment

Cerebrovascular accident (stroke) is the second leading cause of chronic disability and death. New strokes affect 10.3 million people per year worldwide. The amount of stroke survivors is increasing, but many remain with severe post-traumatic symptoms. Hence, stroke is a major economic burden, with a cost of around 45 billion € in Europe in 2017 alone. Only 44% of this cost is due to the initial treatment, the remaining 56% is related to the chronic care setting (rehabilitation, nursing home, loss of productivity by the patient, etc.). Today, several treatments are available in the acute (< 24 hours) and subacute phase, but there is no proven clinical therapy yet for chronic (> 6 months) stroke patients. A stroke may cause a large amount of brain neurons to die, creating an abnormal brain cavity (aBC), often with an irregular shape. Surviving neurons near the aBC wall often show abnormal hyper-excited behavior, resulting in the patient’s chronic post-stroke problems. Recently, indications have been reported that such patients may benefit from neurostimulation at the aBC wall (similar in concept to deep brain stimulators) as a treatment in this chronic phase. Since state-of-the-art neural probes are way too stiff to cover the irregular aBC wall, the PhD research is part of a project that aims to create and show the feasibility of a novel class of neural recording and stimulation systems, which have flexible active electrode arrays, are inserted endoscopically into the aBC, and cover the aBC wall with a very high density of contacts, enabling the desired localized stimulation/recording. The research contribution will be on the development of an integrated electronic system for readout and stimulation of the electrodes connected to the cavity walls, preferably building a closed-loop system. Such system must allowing for the selection of the best-placed electrodes at any time, enabling automated calibration and recalibration towards maximum impact over a long period of in-vivo usage.