Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Brain mapping and unlocking the brain circuitry, can open incredible opportunities for the diagnosis and treatment of brain disorders from Parkinson and Alzheimer's disease to mental disorders. This has been the driving force of the scientific community's effort and has resulted in several ground-breaking innovations in brain study methods (eg. optogenetics, connectomics, magnetic resonance imaging, supercomputers for simulating the brain etc.). Each of these approaches faces either technological or fundamental challenges. As such, a complete mapping of the networks of billions of neurons in the brain remains a challenge.******We are developing an electronic-photonic brain-machine interface system for simultaneous optical stimulation of the brain cortex along with electrical recording of neurons. Our system is composed of microlasers and light-switchable graphene-based electrodes. The microlasers are engineered to be analogous to biological neurons and emit spikes' as light pulses with high temporal resolution and micron-scale spatial resolution. These light spikes switch on the graphene-based electrodes on the cortex to deliver the required electric voltage for neurons stimulation.******For modulating the microlasers, we are requesting an arbitrary waveform generator (AWG). An AWG can output user-defined arbitrary shape waveforms at high speeds that can mimic real-world signals (eg. spikes). The electrodes must be ultra-conformal to the complex topology of the brain's cortex to enable stable stimulation and recording of the neurons. Therefore, the electrodes' substrate must be ultra-thin, transparent to light, and biocompatible. Parylene is the only polymer that can satisfy these requirements. We are requesting a parylene deposition system (ie. a coater) to make the substrates for fabricating the light-switchable graphene electrodes. ******This equipment will support our collaborative and interdisciplinary research program, and the training of our 19 HQP across three departments (eng. physics, electrical eng., neuroscience) in addition to 10+ HQP of our collaborators (chemical eng., chemistry) as part of the NSERC CREATE-MAPS program who access our lab equipment (such as e-beam evaporator) on a daily basis. Striving for diversity including balanced gender representation, inclusivity and advancement of under-represented groups, our team consists of a female postdoc (Venezuela), 3 female graduate and 5 female undergrad students, and 2 graduate students from underrepresented minority.******Enabled by the bidirectional communication between the biological and artificial microlaser neurons, the proposed system is capable of copying' a complex unknown network of neurons in the brain to a known network of hardware components on a chip. The copied network can be used to unlock the communication patterns of the brain. If successful on a large-scale, such a brain mapping technique could be used to study neurological disorders that affect 1 billion people globally.