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Why aren't these implants based from designs of CMOS camera sensors?

Take a CMOS sensor, and put a metal spike on top of every pixel (easy with current processes). Now you have 10 million measurements that you can take at 240fps...



Because you need to be inside the brain, not just on the surface. And the electrodes need to be flexible, not stiff spikes. So with those constraints, their current approach makes sense. They’ll get to millions of electrodes in the future.


Spikes that are under 1um thick end up being very flexible.


Because the metal spikes would puncture blood vessels in the brain. Part of the surgical robotics is focused on individually inserting spikes while avoiding blood vessels. Watch the presentation.


These metal spikes would probably be only 20 um long and 1um wide, so not long enough to puncture blood vessels.




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