Do you need damage control – for your brain?
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Whoaaaa a frosty snowboarding WIPEOUT ! My Apple Watch says I took a fall… But what I want to know is: how’s my head?
Enter Yan Dong and team from Ohio State University. They’ve come up with a concussion-detector!
Their waterproof silicon sensor is thinner than a human hair. It can be inserted directly into your head and lasts a few years. It senses chemicals in the brain and then sends electrical signals out to your device.
The team tested it in a chemical solution mimicking our brain environment.
Results? The sensor got it right! It accurately measured the activity of two chemicals, potassium and sodium. Both are indicators of traumatic brain injury.
This promising tech could potentially be paired with our smart watches! It might lead to early diagnosis of chronic diseases, like Parkinson’s.
So when you take a spill – check your watch! Or just ask those little birds flying around your head…
Reference: Dong, Y., Chen, S., Liu, T.-L., Li, J., Materials and Interface Designs of Waterproof Field-Effect Transistor Arrays for Detection of Neurological Biomarkers. Small 2022, 2106866. https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202106866
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