Integrated Circuits Interfacing with Neurons

Most of the neurological diseases are intractable ones and cause enormous economic and societal costs. It was recently found that the disorders in brain connectivity are the reasons for such conditions, calling for the methods to modulate the functional connectivity of the neuronal network effectively. On the other hand, there are intensive ongoing research efforts to demystify the structural and functional connectivity as well as the dynamics of neuron activity in the human brain, requiring the innovative tools that can enable such studies. In all these scenarios, the integrated circuits that can interface with neurons should play a key role. In this talk, the requirements and recent advances in the development of neural interface circuits will be presented. As the key components of the bidirectional neural interface, the neural recording and stimulation circuits will be investigated. Also, the recent research works toward the development of concurrent bidirectional neural interface will be introduced together with the advanced circuit techniques invented for its realization. Such interface technology enables the modulation as well as the study of the human brain in a closed-loop manner eventually, which makes a vast difference from prior methods and approaches.