Human-centered brain interfaces

Finding the most appropriate technology for building electrodes that can be interfaced to the brain in long term implants in humans is a challenging issue. What are the most appropriate technologies? How could one achieve robustness, stability, compatibility, efficacy and versatility, for both recording and stimulation? There are no easy answers to these questions as even the most fundamental and apparently obvious factors to be taken into account, such as the necessary mechanical, electrical and biological properties and their interplay, are still under debate. We present here the most promising approaches for addressing such issues in the context of diagnostics of brain diseases and neuroprostethic applications.

Prof. Dr. D. Ricci

Davide Ricci received the MSc degree in Physics and the PhD degree in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Genoa, Italy, in 1989 and 1993, respectively. He is currently Researcher at the Center of Translational Neurophysiology of the Italian Institute of Technology, Ferrara, Italy, supervising the activity on novel neural interfaces. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, conference proceedings, and books. His research interests include the integration of novel materials - conductive polymers, nanocrystals and carbon nanomaterials - with conventional technologies, for the development of devices such as neural electrodes for Brain Machine Interfaces, of flexible nano-actuators and sensors for robotics and of smart interfaces for tissue engineering and prosthetics.