Neuroscience goes punk? I’m a teenage lobotomy!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
No one wants to leave from their brain scan looking like Joey Ramone! But that bulky headgear for electroencephalograms is a guaranteed bad hair day. How can we make E-E-G’s … cooler looking?
Enter Nanshu Lu and team at the University of Texas, Austin.
First, they created a 3-D scan of the participant’s head. Then, they sprayed a skin-thick material directly on the participant’s scalp! The electrodes were ultimately linked to equipment away from the body.
The “e-tattoo” was accurate, stable for SIX hours, and removed with rubbing alcohol!
By making E-E-G’s more accessible, e-tattoos hold great potential for diagnostics AND brain-machine interfaces.
Now, that is some rockin’ science! Just… go easy on the headbanging!!
Reference: Vasconcelos, L. S. de, Yan, Y., Maharjan, P., Kumar, S., Zhang, M., Yao, B., Li, H., Duan, S., Li, E., Williams, E., Tiku, S., Vidal, P., Solorzano-Vargas, R. S., Hong, W., Du, Y., Liu, Z., Iwane, F., Block, C., Repetski, A. T., … Lu, N. (2024). On-scalp printing of personalized electroencephalography e-tattoos. Cell Biomaterials, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celbio.2024.100004