Brainwaves

So the category of Implantable Medical Devices is quite large and diverse

The most common ones are probably lens implants for cataracts   

Oh, I hadn’t thought of those! My grandma had that!

Yep, very common, and knee replacements are more common than hip replacements

OK, sure, but stuff like this is … an old hat, right? We’ve been doing this for a long time?

Absolutely, knee replacements started in the 19th century already

Now what about the new and controversial devices? You mentioned working on a brain implant?

That’s right, a neurostimulator for chronic back pain after spinal injury

Cool! So what does that do exactly? 😁

After a spinal injury a lot of people develop chronic pain and our device basically intercepts the pain signals

So we can detect and block such specific signals?

There are various techniques to measure brain activity, like an EEG or fMRI

An EEG is an “electroencephalogram”: measuring electrical activity on the scalp that corresponds to activity in the brain.

fMRI is “Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging”, measuring brain activity by measuring blood flow in the brain

OK, I did know about those. These are non-invasive, without surgery, right?

Right, but with surgery we can also put electrodes directly in the brain

Like Deep Brain Stimulation? 😵‍

Well, there is a difference between measuring and stimulating, but basically yes.

And then you can hook the electrodes up to a computer?

Not always, but, yes, that is a possibility                                                

That’s the kind of implantable device I was talking about: Brain-Computer Interfaces!