Due to their flexibility and robustness, polymer optical fibers represent a promising platform for the development of brain-compatible implantable devices with reduced risk of tissue inflammation. Furthermore, by combining different biocompatible materials it is possible to integrate multiple functionalities in a single hybrid optical fiber. This approach allows the fabrication of soft brain interfaces able to support multiple modalities of neural interrogation. Such interfaces capable of simultaneous light delivery and recording of neuronal activity with minimal tissue damage are currently lacking for infrared wavelengths in the strong water absorption region. This spectral region, in particular, is crucial for infrared neuromodulation, a promising technique for direct light-induced control of neural activity without genetic manipulation. Here we present novel infrared fiber-based neural interfaces developed by thermal drawing of soft, biocompatible optical polymers, which are able to simultaneously modulate and record neural activity, as validated experimentally in vivo.
Implantable optical fibers have been widely used for optical neuromodulation in deep brain regions. Polymer fiber-based neural devices have natural advantages over silica fibers since their high flexibility would lead to a less inflammatory response in chronic in vivo experiments. Using three kinds of polymer materials: polycarbonate (PC), polysulfone (PSU), and fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP), we present multifunctional soft polymer fiber (POF)-based brain implants with an Ultra-High Numerical Aperture (UHNA) and integrated Microfluidic Channels (MCs) for wide illumination and drug delivery, respectively. The flexibility of the proposed fiber devices has been found to be 100-fold reduced compared to their commercially available counterparts. Biofluids delivery can be controllably achieved over a wide range of injection rates spanning from 10 nL/min to 1000 nL/min by the structured MCs in the fiber cladding. The illumination area of the UHNA POFs in brain phantom has been increased significantly compared with the commercially available silica fibers. A fluorescent light recording experiment has been conducted to demonstrate the proposed UHNA POFs can be used as optical waveguides in fiber photometry. The limited illumination angle of the optical fiber imposed by current technology has been enlarged by the proposed UHNA POFs and we anticipate our work to pave the way toward more efficient multifunctional neural probes for neuroscience.
Infrared neurostimulation has emerged in recent years as a promising technique for controlling neuronal activity without genetic manipulation. Having high absorption of the employed wavelengths as its fundamental mechanism, it requires implantable platforms to deliver light in brain regions deeper than the first cortical layers. Due to the spatial confinement of the stimulation, electrodes integrated in close proximity to the illumination spot are desirable to verify the effects of the stimulation by extracellular electrophysiology. Here we developed and validated in vivo a multifunctional neural interface based on a soft, biocompatible polymer optical fiber that allows simultaneous infrared neurostimulation and electrophysiology.
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