The original goal of the neural dust project was to imagine the next generation of brain-machine interfaces, and to make it a viable clinical technology,” neuroscience graduate student Ryan Neely said in a press release. “If a paraplegic wants to control a computer or a robotic arm, you would just implant this electrode in the brain and it would last essentially a lifetime.”
In the future, the engineers hope to design the device so that it can be implanted in the brain and detect non-electrical signals, including data on oxygen and hormone levels.